


This City, Its People

by bwyn



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Library, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Keith and Shiro are Siblings, M/M, Minor Character Death, Strangers to Lovers, Violence, loosely based off Misfits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-01-31 07:57:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 49,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12677685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bwyn/pseuds/bwyn
Summary: The storm came as hail the size of cars and skies rent apart by lightning, and in the wake of its destruction, humans with strange abilities they don't know how to control. Keith is one of these misfits, impervious to the powers of others, as is Lance, whose persuasive words do more harm than good. They meet in a city full of people with abilities, launching both into a story of finding humanity in a place intent on taking it away.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> here it is!! 
> 
> i worked alongside [dodothebard](http://dodothebard.tumblr.com) and i hope y'all are as pumped as i am after having seen the finished product!!
> 
> esp thanks to [lauren](http://nasalesbians.tumblr.com/) and [kayt](http://sleeping4tnight.tumblr.com/) for betaing chunks of this monstrosity
> 
> and lastly!! [a playlist!!](https://open.spotify.com/user/bitterbeetle/playlist/5tb0xAhx1lk7Qh4D6c02xF) it's over 2 hours and doesn't make sense on shuffle but it's what i used to get into the Mood for this fic.
> 
> a thing to note: i would've said non-graphic violence but while it isn't _graphic_ to me, it isn't...non-graphic... so we get just plain old Violence™. just so you're aware there is fighting and a lot of it :))) this is definitely a break from my norm. also i'll be posting relatively quickly but y'all get bite-sized chunks while i do so.

The city is a gleaming paragon of control. Chaos is so easy to come by when a statistically significant percentage of people in the world have powers—but Altea is a stronghold. There is safety in a place run for and by _misfits_ , those with abilities beyond the capacity of science to explain. It promises new starts, new lives, and the potential to flourish once more as a community.

However, the brighter the beacon, the darker its shadows—and Altea’s shadows run deep.

Keith is well aware of this, because he sees the darkness leeching the vibrancy from the bricks and mortar with inky fingers. He sees it in the eyes that gleam from narrow alleys, the trembling fingers of a pedestrian across the road, and the smile with an edge like a razorblade.

He has seen it in the cracks like lightning bolts etched ragged in the walls of his home.

* * *

The point of view switches sporadically between first person and third. Maybe it hasn’t changed at all, and the little boy screaming in the dust and debris is not him, but someone else—yet he knows it’s untrue. It was always him. It _is_ always him, howling for someone to save him. Nobody comes.

It’s just him and a haze of light streaming through clouds of filth that curl and stretch like smoke. He knows the light isn’t safe—tries to crawl away from it—but there’s something pinning him down. A chair, laid across his legs, but it changes into a wooden beam. When he twists around and shoves the beam—no, it’s a limp arm now—off his leg, he doesn’t acknowledge the transformation.

There’s a shadow coming for him through the fog of destruction. It’s blurry and ill-defined, but he knows what accompanies it.

He struggles, the sobs caught in his throat. He watches himself thrash. He digs his fingers into the thick ash, cold and damp and heavy as mud. The shadow approaches. It speaks.

Keith can’t understand a word it’s saying.

* * *

Keith wakes in ice, his terror a shot of adrenaline to his system. Every muscle tenses, prepared to lash out, and while his brain is doused in cold awareness, he doesn’t move. He freezes, a statue, until the warmth from the hand on his shoulder seeps through his shirt and his skin.

“Keith?”

He exhales. A paper flutters under his breath. On the next inhale he smells books, new and old, and a waft of spearmint from his coworker’s hands. Slowly, concealing caution with leisure, Keith straightens in his seat. There’s a spot of drool on the desk from where he was resting his head. A quick swipe with his forearm eliminates the evidence.

“Sorry, Hunk,” he says with an apologetic grin. “I don’t think my coffee was strong enough this morning.”

His coworker, Hunk, a tall young man with a broad chest and soft belly, cocks an eyebrow at Keith. “If your coffee gets any stronger, it’ll bore a hole through your stomach.”

“I can only dream,” sighs Keith. He pushes himself from the desk and stands to stretch. More joints than just his spine pop and he exhales a shuddering breath of relief.

“Didn’t sleep well last night?” asks Hunk as he moves to pick up a tilting stack of books from the edge of the desk.

 _Sleep? Never heard of her_. “It was a bit rough,” Keith admits, righting the leaning top half of Hunk’s tower.

“You could always take a nap in the breakroom,” suggests Hunk, using his chin to keep the books in place. “I could bring over some of the beanbags from the kids’ section.”

Keith shakes his head and grins. “Don’t worry about it. Do you need any help putting those away?”

“Nah, I’ll manage—” The tower shudders and Keith flings out a hand to stop an ill-placed magazine from buckling the whole structure. “...On second thought. Please.”

Keith relieves Hunk of half his burden. The carts are either packed or missing again. A couple regulars—kids, not even five years old—have been using them to race between the aisles. Keith only managed to catch them once, but their faces immediately crumbled as they cried and there was no way Keith was able to handle _that_. So he let them off the hook with a stern, albeit awkward, warning. Not that they have been honouring it or anything. Keith thinks that maybe Pidge has been feeding them ideas, since he’s seen his short coworker whispering conspiratorially with them on more than one occasion.

Presently, the miscreants and Pidge are both MIA. Hunk finds a half filled cart and they sort the stacks by genre and author. Together, Keith and Hunk roam up and down the aisles, slotting books back where they belong.

Sunlight streams through the windows, falling in warm beams across tables and armchairs. College students sitting with poor posture tilt their laptops away from the sun’s glare. The smell of books is stronger in the heat, a cozy scent that reminds Keith of wool blankets and drinking black coffee. He often finds himself tempted to curl up in a pile of beanbags and just breathe it in, maybe coax sweet dreams from the suffocating ones, but he has a job to do organizing the shelves and removing empty coffee cups from bookends.

They move on to the young adult section. Here, the book covers are just barely saved from bleaching by the sun’s rays filtering through the skylights, but any left out are in real danger. Hunk goes to hunt down those in need of rescue while Keith continues shelving. He’s reached the end of the aisle, a thin trilogy gripped between his fingers, when Hunk returns with several more orphaned novels. He begins placing them, but pauses at the last one, suspended in midair between cart and shelf. It’s something Keith has also done, flipping through a book out of curiosity in the midst of organizing, but Hunk’s expression is different.

He’s smiling at the cover, turning it over to see the continuation of artwork beneath the synopsis. As Keith watches, slotting the trilogy where it belongs, Hunk’s smile twists oddly and pinches at the corner. His eyes, usually bright and shrewd, seem to glaze over.

“You planning on reading it?” asks Keith, drawing Hunk’s attention back to the present.

His coworker smiles, a vague thing. The book is pinned resolutely between its rightful neighbours on the shelf. “I’ve read it a few times. It was—it’s my best friend’s favourite. When we were kids.”

“Why not borrow them?” Keith reaches out to tip the corner of the book free. “Bring it over to them, relive your youth or something.”

He nearly misses the hard flash in Hunk’s eyes, the pinch of his brow and the tight lipped smile that becomes a regretful one. Keith is almost envious of how swiftly Hunk changes his expression, but he has to remind himself that the other man doesn’t try. That’s just how his emotions play out across his face, an improvised act with no stage directions. Where Keith fights to keep his rawest feelings from being read, Hunk lets them be. He’s a man with nothing to hide. Keith envies that too.

The book’s teasing corner slides back into line with a press of Hunk’s finger. “I would,” he says ruefully, “but I’m not sure where he is.”

“Ah,” says Keith. “Did he… move away?”

“Something like that.” Hunk’s voice is as heavy as his brow settling low over his eyes. “He… became paranoid and left.”

 _Left where?_ Keith is tempted to ask, but he holds back. The conversation is threatening to enter deeper territory than what is meant to be exchanged between coworkers. Keith casts his gaze for something else to talk about, to segue naturally from idle chatter into the comfortable silence they had before.

Keith pushes a bookend flush against the shelf. A clammy hand jolts out from the other side of the shelf to brush his knuckles. Keith freezes. His gaze meets one that flashes light—the sun reflecting off round spectacles.

“ _Tch_.” Pidge frowns and retracts her hand. “I thought I would get you to scream that time.”

Keith doesn’t tell her that his first reaction—thankfully overpowered by his second—was to stab a pencil through her hand. The wooden writing instrument turned stake hangs safely from the clipboard on the cart. Pidge, unaware, rounds the shelf to join them on the other side. Hunk looks far more startled than Keith, a broad hand pressed to his chest and eyes wide and baleful.

“This is a _library_ ,” hisses Hunk. “Have some respect for the patrons.”

“Calm down,” says Pidge dismissively. “I was waiting for a solid four minutes. Two hundred and forty seconds, Hunk. Give me a break.”

“Not likely.” He inhales deeply, eyelids fluttering shut with the weight of it, and when they open again he continues shelving.

“So, I couldn’t help but overhear,” begins Pidge, leaning on the cart. It begins to roll, stopped only by a calmly placed foot courtesy of Keith. “Were you talking about Lance?”

Keith blinks at Pidge, and then allows his gaze to slide to Hunk. He reaches the end of the shelf and has no more books to put away. Empty hands lean against the smooth wood. He nods.

“He can’t hide forever,” says Pidge with certainty. “If the shit he said about your cookies was honest, he’ll be back.”

Curiosity nags Keith, but he doesn’t ask. As it turns out, he doesn’t have to. Pidge turns her head to give Keith a sharp once-over. She seems to find what she’s looking for—or at least a lack of what she wishes to avoid—because Pidge nods once and straightens up from the cart.

“Lance used to work here,” says Pidge, cocking a hip and nodding at Keith. “You filled in his position, actually.”

“Ah.” Keith takes a moment to convince himself that he didn’t take the job of a ghost. This Lance didn’t _die_ , he just ran away. Keith’s brain decides it rather likes the spookier side of things and runs wild with it. Ghost stories, haunting, possession—the whole shebang fills his head like too much water filling a jug. His face, on the other hand, remains blank.

“Don’t make it sound weird,” admonishes Hunk with a frown. “The library needed extra help, so Coran found Keith. He isn’t filling in for Lance or anything.”

“Mhm,” hums Pidge doubtfully.

Hunk levels another unimpressed look at her and then fixes an apologetic one for Keith. Before he can say anything, or god forbid, _apologize_ , Keith waves off the start of his words with a hand. “I really don’t care. A job’s a job. Now, if he does come back and demand it back, I might have to fight him.”

Hunk blinks, then grins. “He’d probably be all for it, honestly.” The smile falls.

The jug sloshes in Keith’s head. He relents. “You said he became paranoid. What about? If you don’t mind me asking.”

Pidge is back to leaning on the cart. The back wheel pinches Keith’s toe, but he says nothing. There aren’t that many people in the library at the moment, but nevertheless Hunk casts his gaze around. It doesn’t seem like a mistrustful or cautious one, but rather as if he is hoping that perhaps this Lance person will appear when he’s being talked about.

Apparently he takes too long to speak, because Pidge says first, “It’s because of the storm.”

 _Ah_. Isn’t it always? Keith feels the moisture pull from his mouth and he swallows, hard.

“Yeah,” says Hunk softly with a nod. “His power… he didn’t know how to control it very well, and started thinking he was going to hurt someone.”

“You,” corrects Pidge. “He thought he might hurt you.”

Hunk looks down at his hands on the edge of the shelf. “That’s not true. He—”

“His family is still in Miami or Cuba,” interjects Pidge, then adds with a glance at Keith, “He’s the only one affected.” She stretches out an arm to tap at the wood surface beside Hunk’s immobile hands. “You’re his family here, _and_ you’re his roommate. Of course he’d be worried he might do something to you without meaning to.”

“That’s not _totally_ true,” says Hunk. “We’re best friends, but he cares a lot about other people too. Which is _why_ I’m so worried about him. He might be isolated somewhere, or talking to the wrong people, maybe he’s already _dead_ and I’ll never know—”

“Hey there, big guy,” cuts in Keith with an arm hovering in front of Hunk’s chest. “He must keep in contact with his family, right? If that’s the case, you would have heard about it already. Which means, he’s probably just figuring out how to control his power, right? That would make sense.”

Reluctantly, Hunk nods.

“So nothing to worry about quite yet.” Keith pauses, then glances between Hunk and Pidge. “How long has he been gone for?”

“Coran waited two weeks after he left to hire someone new,” says Pidge.

Keith has been working at the library for a month already. He tries not to let the doubt cast a shadow over his face. Before he can say something, Hunk slams a book onto the shelf and inhales deep. He shows Keith and Pidge a wry smile, the expression loaded, before gripping the book cart and wheeling it further down. Pidge and Keith swivel out of his way. The line of his shoulders is stiff with tension, but Hunk appears sturdy as he quickly returns to the front desk for more books.

“He both hates and loves talking about Lance,” mumbles Pidge.

Keith absently pulls several books forward until their spines are flush with their neighbours. “I can’t imagine why.”

* * *

At the end of the evening, after scouring the library for the lingering few patrons, Keith leaves Pidge and Hunk. Their eyes follow him, as they always do after closing up on Saturdays. As always, Keith walks away with hunched shoulders and a longer stride than necessary. They understand the preemptive rejection—or at least, Keith assumes they do, because they never end up inviting him out.

When they’re safely out of sight, Keith lets his shoulders drop and his head rise. His stride remains brisk and purposeful as he cinches his gloves tighter on his hands. There’s always a moment where he can’t help but curl his lip at his own caution, to hide evidence of his presence wherever he goes, but it passes just as quickly.

It’s a habit born out of necessity after all.

The park changes at night. Beneath the sun and a vibrant sky, the trees are as vivid as precious gems. The water glitters and ripples around the churning of fins and webbed feet. The air is alive with the murmur of conversations, laughter like bells, contrasting symphonies of birdsong—but when the sun sets, and the last fingers of colour drain into the horizon, it becomes something strange and foreboding.

The air is still. Any creatures still awake are hushed and secretive. Footsteps are warning bells, voices are danger signs. Everyone knows the park is dangerous when only the moon surveys it.

Keith knows this, but it’s also the reason why he is walking just outside the circle of dim lamps. Someone is lying sprawled on a bench, mumbling in a drunken stupor. Keith ignores them, but glances over his shoulder twice in case they rise for an attack. Nothing happens, and Keith loses sight of them around the curve of the path.

Lamplight stutters here. Further on, several of the lamps’ bulbs have already burst. As Keith passes beneath them, his shoes crunch on broken glass and plastic. He pauses there to listen, but whatever fight broke out has long since ended.

The trees cluster tighter as he moves deeper into the park. A creek runs parallel with the path, but even the bubbling of the shallow water over stone sounds ominous in the dark. Keith can’t find it in himself to feel frightened—he’s already seen worse, felt worse, than just the prickle of unease whenever there’s a hiccup in the night’s ballad.

The stream widens until it’s spilling out into the pond. The shadows deepen under the stronger lamplight here. The path splits; one branch continues around the perimeter of the body of water, while the other passes over in a bridge. There’s someone—or _something_ , one could never be sure in Altea—perched on the shallow arch. As Keith nears, he sees the likely human swinging their legs out over the water.

“This probably isn’t high enough to jump off,” says Keith, as if approaching a stranger in a park after nightfall is normal—or safe.

They turn their head and Keith is speaking to a young man, maybe his own age, but with dark circles around gleaming eyes. His gaze flicks over Keith, judging his threat level, a mirror image of Keith.

“That’s a dangerous thing to say, buddy,” says the stranger, unfazed.

Keith rests his forearms on the brick rail. He doesn’t seem a threat, but that’s only because he hasn’t attacked yet. Everyone is technically a danger. “My bad.”

“Nah, it’s fine.”

The stranger looks out back over the water, its surface reflecting the distant glitter of city lights. He raises a hand to brush through short hair. Keith’s sharp gaze follows the movement, outlines the straight bridge of the other man’s nose and the bored pucker of his mouth. Assured he isn’t going to receive a knife to his ribs without provocation, Keith lets his eyes turn to the water.

“If you ask me if I come here often,” drawls the man, “I’ll backhand you. Knuckles across the cheekbone, purple bruises, the whole shebang.”

Keith hums thoughtfully. “Actually, I was going to ask if you’ve witnessed any murders lately, but that’s good to know.”

“Murders, huh?” The man leans back on his palms. “The other day, I heard a little girl tell her sister that her eyeliner was uneven and she needed to fix it. I think that counts as a savage murder.”

“Brutal. Called out by a kid.”

“Children these days,” sighs the man. “They’ve got too much confidence. Someone oughta knock ‘em down a peg.”

“Bring back bullies,” deadpans Keith. “Down with safe school environments.”

“You can’t _really_ learn without the fear of being clocked in the head with an eraser.”

“It’s what made me who I am today.”

“Oh, same. Where would I be without a ruined sense of self worth, existential dread and crippling guilt?”

Keith cocks an eyebrow and catches the stranger’s bland mile. “Well, I mean, probably not on the edge of a bridge.”

There’s a beat of silence, not even long enough for Keith to regret saying anything, and the stranger is laughing. Full-bellied, ear-splitting guffaws. He even slaps a hand against his knee as he kicks his heels against the brickwork. Keith is startled into staring, but quickly turns to grin at the open air instead.

“ _Aah_ , man,” sighs the stranger, his voice hiccuping with giggles. “I should talk to randos more often. Nobody to give me worried mother hen looks when I joke about the void that is my life.”

“I’d definitely tip more towards concerned if this bridge was a few dozen yards up,” says Keith, peering over the edge. “Keith, by the way.”

“Hm?”

“My name.”

“ _Ah_. Are we moving into friendship territory?”

Keith rolls his eyes. “I’m going to need something more than _that guy from the park_ , especially if you happen to frequent this bridge.”

“Assuming we meet again,” says the stranger. “Which we might, since I do frequent this bridge. I’m Lance.”

“Lance, huh.” Keith ponders the weight of the name on his tongue. It only takes a moment for him to realize why it’s familiar. He casts a look in Lance’s direction, taking in the warm bronze skin. It’s not much to go off of, but what are the chances? “Are you Cuban?”

Lance blinks down at him, turning his face from the moonlight reflecting off the pond. “What? Yeah. How’d you know?”

Keith isn’t sure how many Cuban Lances there are in the city that happen to be his age, but definitely not enough to dismiss going out on another limb.

“I think I might know you,” he begins.

The reaction is immediate—elbows locking as shoulders hitch up, stiffening as his gaze frosts over. It isn’t an angry look, moreso wary, as if expecting Keith to lash out. He looks away, avoiding Keith’s piercing gaze.

“I work with Hunk,” continues Keith bluntly, but he frowns when Lance’s posture doesn’t change. If anything, it only grows more rigid.

“Is that right,” hums Lance, his voice reading nonchalant while the lines of his shoulders scream anxious.

Leaning forward subtly, trying to catch Lance’s expression, Keith adds, “He misses you.”

“I see.”

Lance’s back stretches as he inhales deeply, and as he exhales, a forced calm descends around him. His gaze is chilled, almost bored, but despite his return to apathy, his fingers are white-knuckled against the brick.

“I don’t know everything,” says Keith slowly, “but whenever you’re brought up, he gets upset. He’s worried, you know. Thinks you’re hanging out with some bad people, if you’re not dead in a ditch.”

“ _Demons_ ,” scoffs Lance with a twist of his mouth. “Say it like it is. He thinks I’m a demon.”

“No. He doesn’t.”

The line of Lance’s jaw tightens. “Liar.”

“I’m not lying.” Keith plants his hands flat on the bricks and hikes his legs over the edge. Lance doesn’t move as Keith settles beside him, the soles of their shoes reflecting in the water. “He wants to see you, make sure you’re fine. Although, by the number of cookies he’s been bringing in to work, it’s more like he’s hoping you’ll waltz through the doors to the library and eat them all singlehandedly.”

Lance snorts. “I manipulated Hunk. He doesn’t even know it. None of them do—they don’t _realize_.”

“Hunk trusts you.”

“Well, he shouldn’t. Nobody should.” Lance abruptly snaps his head to pin Keith with a look of bitter acceptance. “I could ask you to jump off this bridge if I wanted. You’d do it.”

Keith does his best to keep his expression blank. “I wouldn’t.”

“You would,” says Lance with a sour smile.

“Try.”

“Have you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?”

Keith stares into Lance’s eyes, as if he can convince him with that look alone. “I said _try_.”

“ _Fine_ ,” snaps Lance. He flings out an arm towards the pond, voice scornful as he says, “You want to jump off this bridge.”

Keith doesn’t move aside from an unconcerned glance towards the water. Despite the lack of reaction, Lance doesn’t seem perturbed, simply cocking an eyebrow as if he just learned something.

His voice loses the scorn. “You want to jump off this bridge. You think it’s a good idea to stand and leap.” There’s more force to it, as if persuading Keith that it _is_ , in fact, a phenomenal idea.

Again, Keith doesn’t move.

This time, there’s the barest flash of uncertainty before Lance is glaring at him. “You _want_ to jump off this bridge because _I am telling you to_.”

“Nah,” says Keith indifferently, “I don’t think I do.”

Lance stares at him, mouth agape. Keith is used to looks of fear, frustration, even rage, as if the erasure of their power is of personal offense; however, when it comes to Lance, his expression isn’t readable in the same way Keith has become accustomed to. There’s no anger or fear, not even a flicker of anxiety. In fact, Keith isn’t sure _what_ is playing across the other man’s face.

“Powers… don’t work on you?” breathes Lance, eyes widening.

“No,” says Keith slowly, watching Lance’s mouth twitch, “None of them.”

“That’s…”

“Inconvenient?” supplies Keith.

“ _Amazing._ ”

A wide smile opens across Lance’s face until dimples prick his cheeks. He looks— _excited?_ Relieved? The reception is so alien to Keith that he can’t help but stammer.

“S–seriously?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” says Lance enthusiastically. His grip tightens on the bridge, and then, piece by piece like Tetris, his expression falls. “Yeah. It’s… amazing.”

The smile gives way to a slack mouth and a bitten lip. The other man’s gaze drifts, as if pulled by a weak magnet, back out across the water.

Watching the excitement drain out of Lance, Keith ventures, “Why?”

“Why do I think your power is amazing?” Lance huffs a bitter laugh. His words are back to being acidic, edged, resentful. “I can’t make you do anything. At all! Nothing!”

“That’s not… frustrating?” Keith frowns. People with power usually enjoy the edge it gives them, whether gained through the usual means—or granted by a freak storm. Having the option to use it taken from them is not received positively.

Yet Lance shakes his head. “You’ve heard stories, yeah? The people that don’t realize they have powers, even when they’re using them, until something terrible happens? That was me, except it was too good. I didn’t realize— I didn’t _know_ —”

He shuts his mouth with a growl. The grinding of his teeth is barely audible, worryingly enough.

“I didn’t know my words were forcing people to do things,” continues Lance, drawing his hands into his lap to twist his fingers together until they look like they might break. “I’d jokingly tell someone they wanted to share something with me, and they did. I thought they were just playing along. I told a girl she’d enjoy one dance. Then another girl, and another. It took awhile, but I started thinking maybe… maybe there was something more going on. Then I got angry. It shouldn’t have happened. If I’d just worded it like I usually did, but I _didn’t_ — I knew what to say and I said it, and I watched a guy walk out into oncoming traffic.”

Lance’s eyes are stretched wide, unfocused in the memory. Keith’s palms are pressed into the brick. There’s a moment where neither of them speak, and then Lance is blinking rapidly until he can level his attempt at an apathetic stare on Keith.

“Someone nearly died because of me, and I realized it was too easy. I tried to tell Hunk, but he was convinced I wouldn’t do something like that on purpose. Still is convinced, I guess. The thing is, I was _fine_ , for awhile. I thought, yeah, I know what to do now. I can use it when necessary. Except Hunk tried to get me to do the dishes when I was in a bad mood, and I forced him to do it instead. It was harmless—but I felt sick.”

A laugh, humourless and cold.

“What else might I get him to do when I’m tired, or annoyed, or just not in the mood? I’d turn my best friend into a puppet. I’d be a fucking demon.”

The quiet descends on them like a thick blanket, suffocating. In the distance, there’s the honk of horns, sirens, the constant soundtrack of the city, and between them is a void. Keith has no words. He wants to say something, but time stretches and he feels the opportunity sliding between his fingers like sand.

So he breaks the silence hurriedly. “Talk to Hunk.”

Lance doesn’t even bother looking at him. His lip curls. “Weren’t you paying attention?”

“Yeah. Talk to him. Trust me.”

“ _Trust me,”_ parrots Lance in a mockery of Keith’s voice. Too high and gaudy. “You should stop acting like you know anything about me after having a one-sided midnight heart-to-heart, man.”

The words remind Keith, frustratingly, how much of a hypocrite he is, trying to convince a stranger to do things he clearly has reason not to do. The cherry on top is that Keith himself knows that if anyone else tried giving him the same lecture, he would be far less accommodating. Looking from the other side of the glass, Keith wishes there is more he can say, but there isn’t. From here on out, it’s redundant.

Leaning down on his palms, Keith pushes himself up to tuck his legs beneath him. He stands there overlooking the glimmering reflection of the city, the uneven glow of the lights along the park walkways. Lance doesn’t look up at him, but Keith notices the way his head tilts towards him, fingers curling in—cautious and prepared, like Keith. His guard is up now that he knows his power doesn’t work.

“Worrying Hunk is on you, then,” says Keith as a final jab, turning and stepping off the low wall to land on the bridge path. “Careful heading home, or wherever you’re squatting.”

He walks away, Lance’s derisive “ _Thanks, mom.”_ trailing after him.

The deeper shadows within the trees envelop him with a chill that prickles the back of Keith’s neck. He keeps his hands loose at his sides, hyperaware of every brush of air against his fingers, his hair, his eyelids every time he blinks. As he skirts another ring of light, Keith resists the urge to turn around and check the bridge. Another light, another bench, no other living thing, and Keith continues facing forward. Only when he’s about to round a curve that will put the bridge out of sight does he pause and glance over his shoulder.

Keith wonders, when he feels safe behind a locked door and shut windows, about the loneliness in those hunched shoulders, silhouette warped against a midnight cityscape.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [here's a link](http://dodothebard.tumblr.com/post/167321832468/i-recently-participated-in-klance-bb-i) to the art on tumblr if y'all wanna reboogle :)))


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk what a posting schedule is fam :)))

The next day dawns bright and finds Keith entering the library just as the last of the hazy late summer fog over the city lifts. There’s already several people wandering about the aisles, a handful of college students who don’t appear to have slept and a couple elderly folks wearing joggers. At the front desk, Hunk is setting out another plate of muffins for the early visitors. From what Keith gathers, Coran had some doubts about the crumbs, but seeing as Hunk cleans the library spotless his every shift, Coran allows it. Keith is grateful, because it means he has something actually good to eat at least half the week.

When Hunk sees Keith, he smiles brighter than the misty sun. “Good morning.”

“‘Morning,” says Keith. “Coffee?”

“Already on my third,” admits Hunk as he grabs a mug for Keith. “Pot’s fresh.”

“That’s scary, man.” The smell of coffee filling his mug clears Keith’s head. Paired with a muffin, he’s set for a few hours. “Maybe you should cut back on the caffeine.”

“I wouldn’t be this chipper if I did,” says Hunk with a shudder. “I’d get fired for sure.”

Keith quirks an eyebrow. “You can’t be _that_ shitty of a morning person.”

“It’s bad,” murmurs Hunk, eyes wide. “Real bad.”

“If you say so,” says Keith doubtfully, settling at the desk with his coffee and a muffin.

Hunk hovers for a few more minutes, organizing the few returns they have into a cart, and then he’s off. After late night escapades, Keith is content to sit back for the better part of the morning, but Hunk insists on moving—something about keeping his blood circulation and caffeine supply in top condition.

By the time Hunk returns, Keith has finished breakfast and is leisurely looking through the list of holds. He doesn’t realize the atmosphere has become awkward until he notices Hunk’s presence leaning against the desk. Keith glances up at him, sees the other man frowning down at his hands, and turns back to the computer monitor.

“What’s up?” he asks. Better to get this—whatever _this_ is—over with.

Hunk huffs. “About yesterday,” he begins, “I wanted to, um, apologize? I know things may have gotten a little heavy—”

“Not at all,” interrupts Keith. Hunk goes quiet, and Keith realizes how rude he was. “Sorry,” he says, looking up from the computer again. “I mean, you don’t need to apologize. No big deal.”

Hunk frowns. Keith inwardly grimaces.

“It’s… not really a _no big deal_ sort of thing, though,” says Hunk, the pucker of his brow deepening. “Sorry for bringing it up. I didn’t want to get all deep on you when we haven’t really talked all that much. I thought it’d be a bit weird for you, y’know?”

“Oh.” Keith feels like an ass. “Uh. That’s fine. I guess it was a little deep, but it wasn’t… uncomfortable? Yeah. So you’re good. Don’t worry about it.”

“Right.”

Hunk plays with his fingers. Keith recalls Lance twisting his around until the joints bent out of shape. He licks his lips, keeping them pinned between his teeth. There’s nothing holding him back from saying that he saw Lance the previous night, except maybe that it isn’t his place to get involved. Lance’s refusal to buckle and visit Hunk on his own is testament to his adamance at keeping his distance. At the same time, however, Lance said nothing about Keith mentioning the encounter, nor did Keith make such a promise.

Hunk pushes off the desk, leaving a wake of awkwardness, but Keith swivels around in his chair to follow. “Hunk, hold up.”

“Yeah?” The twiddling doesn’t stop.

“Last night,” says Keith, allowing his honesty to orchestrate the admission, “I was walking through the park and I met Lance.”

If Hunk had been holding something, it surely would have shattered on the ground. As it is, he drops his hands to his sides as if they’re suddenly magnetized.

“You saw him?” croaks Hunk.

His expression is so nervous and painfully hopeful that Keith feels a sudden jolt of anger towards Lance, for leaving his friend with nothing but a gnawing worry.

“Yeah,” says Keith after swallowing the ire that threatened to leak into his voice. “He’s fine. Looking a bit moody.”

A muscle twitches in Hunk’s jaw. “And? Is—will he…?”

“No, I… don’t think he’ll be stopping by.”

Predictably, Hunk’s face falls with the swift weight of a heavy curtain. Resigned, he looks away. Keith’s fingers meet around the smooth ceramic of his coffee mug.

“At least he’s okay,” says Hunk softly.

“Yeah,” says Keith. “Yeah, he’s okay.”

Hunk nods once, twice, and without looking back around at Keith he says, “Thanks.”

Keith watches him go, fingers itching without knowing why. He wonders, briefly, what the library was like before.

* * *

In the darkness, everything is still. The ceiling sags under its own weight. Pieces of drywall and plaster start falling in ragged chunks, as if the cold light beyond it is piercing through. The floor is muddy ash, the suction trapping Keith’s fingers every time he lifts his hands. Each kick of desperation makes it worse. The muck clings to his bare legs, fingers of filth sliding over the scrapes and gouges that decorate his ashen skin. The light spills into the building faster. Keith kicks harder.

He sees a desk now. It’s burnt, the lacquer finish bubbling under a heat that no longer exists. One growing lobe of shellac bursts, releasing a cloud of fresh ash into the simmering air. Keith thinks he might be sweating, the salty water slick on his skin, but it could also be the mud crawling up his arms, and he doesn’t want to see for certain.

Now there’s a chair, the shadows pulling back like curtains on a burning bright stage. In the chair is a person that is no longer a person. Keith heaves, kicks again. His foot hits something solid amongst the muck. A layer of dry soot plumes above an arm. Keith knows it isn’t attached to anyone, and looks away.

The ceiling crumbles faster, revealing what remains of an indiscriminate building, all molten plastic and crispy furniture. The light engulfs it all, cold and sharp and apathetic to the panicked thrashing of a little boy in the mud.

A door opens and Keith sees them coming through the haze. The light begins to flash, strobing over the flickering silhouette that glides over the ruin towards him. Keith tries to beg them to leave, tries to scream curses, tries to raise his fists from the muck and fight—but nothing works. The figure exhales smoke, a single glowing red eye considering the boy.

Then a hand made of embers reaches for him, every curl of ash scraping together in a whisper — “...useful… go… _go_ …”

Keith weeps as the ground swallows him up.

* * *

It takes Keith the better part of the morning, three staggered cups of coffee, and a hundred push-ups to get rid of the feeling of being consumed by mud. When the crawling sensation stops, he persists into pull-ups and sit-ups and weights until his muscles burn and he’s able to convince himself that no amount of mud can pin him down. The last of his lingering uneasiness is washed away with a lukewarm shower and an excessive amount of soap.

With a fresh shirt and damp hair swept back from his face, Keith feels human. He can forget, while walking away from his apartment, that the people beside him on the street can burn buildings, flip cars, turn into other people—even force others to do things with a single word. For an hour, Keith can pretend Altea is a normal city that didn’t sprout out from the concrete one day with promises on steel lips.

That is, until the sidewalk changes from gum splattered grey to clean cut white concrete, dusted by hundreds of shoes’ dirt and rolling leaves from far-spreading oaks. At the edge of the languidly curving path towards the building entrance, a woman kneels beside a young child. Her voice is serious as she speaks to the child, but the child is wearing a frown. Further along, a lone man forces a smile on his face, gazing upon one of the oak trees; Keith watches his expression crumple and the tears roll.

By the time Keith walks through the sliding double doors, he feels unsettled once more. As always, it’s slightly different than the sharp edged discomfort from his dreams—a hazy thing that clings. It doesn’t have anything to do with the blue hospital gowns or the white lab coats or the scratch of a pen held in unsteady hands. Instead, it’s the count of his footsteps from entrance to desk, the apathetic eyes and the kind smile of the receptionist, the gazes that follow him, wondering, curious, nosey.

On the fourth floor, Keith looks through a window and sees the city sprawling out. There’s the downtown core in his immediate vicinity, blocking much of the apartment complexes further along, and then—barely visible between two towering skyscrapers—the vivid green of trees packed densely. On street level, an ambulance screams through an intersection. It looks and feels like a city with deep roots.

“Keith.”

He turns and blinks at the doctor; taller than him, white hair in a bun that was maybe neat hours ago, but now is losing its hold in wisps and curls. She smiles, but it’s a greeting, not an offer of tired sympathy. Keith likes this doctor especially, if only for that.

“Allura,” greets Keith.

She cocks an eyebrow, but doesn’t insist on using her title. “Every Tuesday,” she says, tucking a clipboard into the crook of her arm. “Like clockwork.”

“That predictable, huh,” says Keith.

“It’s been three months, anyone would catch on by now.” She looks over his shoulder, at the buildings forming mountain ranges between skyscrapers. Her mouth twists briefly. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that.”

For a moment, Keith worries that he’s going to be chased off the premises for visiting too often. “Did someone say something? I honestly didn’t mean it when I said the janitor looked like a serial killer—”

Allura hides a startled laugh behind her hand and quickly waves away Keith’s concerns. “It’s not that,” she assures him, and when her smile falls and her expression turns grim, Keith’s gut twists. “Let’s go see him together.”

Unable to say no, Keith simply nods and walks past her down the corridor. She follows a step behind, allowing him to lead her through the intensive care unit to room 418.

Machines beep, keeping in time with the bright lines like tracer fire on their screens. As the door swings shut behind them, the clamor of the hospital fades. The beeping grows louder in his ears. Sunlight pushes through the slatted blinds, leaving stripes like cell bars across the lone occupied bed in the room. The sheets are crisp and clean, tucked in around the mattress and tenting over the feet of the man lying there. His hair is kept short, but the strands coming in colourless are still visible. His face is gaunt, his closed eyes ringed darkly, but his brow is smooth and peaceful.

Keith stands at the side of the bed, touching his fingertips to the cool flesh of his brother’s hand. Allura steps up from behind to lift his file from where it hangs at the foot of the bed. It’s only habit that she looks over it—both she and Keith are well aware nothing has changed.

“Takashi’s state has remained static for three months,” begins Allura.

“I know,” says Keith.

“He’s still dependant on a ventilator,” she continues, “but brain scans yield nothing. No damage, no changes since recovering from his initial injuries. We’ve done everything we can—”

“No,” interrupts Keith, “you haven’t. Not everything.”

The doctor’s hands fall to the plastic footboard. “I wish we could do something—”

“Doctors call themselves healers,” Keith cuts in again, looking up from his brother to glare at Allura. Like her or not, his temper flares at her lie. “That’s a load of bull. You’re letting Shiro die because I don’t have enough money.”

“We don’t know if a healer will work—”

“Is that an excuse?”

To her credit, Allura doesn’t let her own anger spark. “He has no treatable wounds, no illnesses. He suffered no complications during surgery—” She breaks off with a helpless wave of her hand, looking down at the prone form on the bed. “He _should_ be awake, or at least breathing on his own, but…”

“But he’s not,” finishes Keith.

“Keith,” begins Allura, her voice calming in a way that only stokes the growing flame of Keith’s ire. “A healer isn’t outside the realm of possibility if you apply for financial aid.”

“Be honest with me, doc,” says Keith. Shiro’s hand is icy in his. He remembers that hand ruffling his hair. He doesn’t look to where he knows the other is missing. “Do you think he’ll wake up? Healer or no?”

Allura doesn’t hesitate. “No, I don’t.”

Keith purses his lips and says, “I’m not pulling the plug.”

His brother is flaxen and pinched. He wonders what a smile would look like on a face like that. When Allura quietly excuses herself, Keith doesn’t acknowledge her. For too long, he gazes upon familiar features on an unfamiliar face; the stretch of the scar across Shiro’s nose, the resting wry curve of his eyebrows, now with cheekbones too sharp and eyes sunken.

“Don’t look so smug,” says Keith, but Shiro doesn’t respond.

Fingers curling, nails biting into his palm, Keith allows himself one last look, drinking in the sight of his perpetually sleeping brother and committing it to memory once more. Then he is spinning on his heel and leaving the room, the floor, the building.

He has a demon to hunt.

* * *

Since moving from the outskirts deeper into the city’s core, Keith used all his available spare time scouring the dingiest corners of the city. From the dankest opium dens to the haunting shadows of the park at night, Keith prowled all of them, until he realized—maybe the demon he is looking for isn’t some petty thief or drug addict loitering amongst the trash. Maybe the most dangerous places to look aren’t the filthiest. When Keith began to take this into account, he also started to _listen_ , and the words that trickled in were far richer in information than the individual creeps chasing nervous civilians through alleyways.

Armed with that information, Keith finds himself taking advantage of his free Sunday slinking around the edge of a far less assuming part of town. The darkness doesn’t stretch as deep, and the foot traffic is steady past narrow restaurants and clothing stores pressed together like books. It wouldn’t be the first place Keith would check for demon activity, but with nothing but whispers urging him on, it’s worth investigating.

There’s one particular building that catches his eye. It’s a bar, the neon lights now dark bland pipe cleaners in the day. Several people, visible through wide bay windows, sit at booths eating lunch. The televisions run whatever sports game is playing. It’s not unusual on its own, but it’s the sharp gaze that follows Keith which grabs his attention. The hair on the back of his neck stands at attention in a prickle of apprehension. Shrewd eyes, thin lips over bared teeth. Two of them.

The taller is broad-shouldered but his sleeves are short, exposing soft flesh. Physically, he’s less likely to pose an issue compared to his friend, a short woman wearing loose clothes. The fabric doesn’t hide the ropey muscle visible in the gap left by her rolled sweatpants. Both are watching him like hawks—Keith only needs a cursory glance to see where the real fight would lie.

The man steps away from the bar and cuts Keith’s advance with a long arm. The woman stays tucked in his shadow—close enough to strike, hidden enough to be a surprise.

“What’s your name, friend?” asks the man. He says _friend_ like one might say _fucking shitnugget douchecanoe_. Keith takes it in stride.

“Akira,” he responds without pause. “Yours?”

Apparently that isn’t how the conversation usually goes. The man blinks in confusion. Then he flinches, presumably nudged by his companion, and pins Keith with another glare.

“You come here often?” he continues, taking an innocuous step closer.

Keith steps back, allowing himself to be herded off the main road. “No.”

“Do you have business in the area?”

“I guess.”

“What kind of business?”

How long until they got bored interrogating him? “A walk. Exploring. Getting to know the area.”

They’re on a one-way packed with parked cars with dented bumpers. One side is mostly scaffolding, and garbage bags are heaped in a pile on the curb, put out far too early for pick-up. Nobody else occupies the street but them.

“That so?”

 _God_. Keith tires first and moves to sidestep the man. “ _Yeah_. I’ll just be on my way.”

The man slides back over to block him once more. His chest seems to expand, and there’s a dark gleam in his beady eyes that doesn’t bode well.

The woman’s voice slithers out from behind him, “His intent—I smell it. Take him.”

“Rethink that,” growls the man, and his voice is suddenly several pitches deeper. A hand twice as big as it was before raises to grasp Keith—who decides that’s his cue.

Keith leans aside, allowing the hand to brush past harmlessly, before winding up with a kick that cracks against the man’s jaw. Keith rights himself as the man staggers back in a daze. There’s no time to watch him prick bemused fingers against broken teeth. The real fight begins with the woman.

Her hand snaps out like a viper, straight fingers shearing through the air. Keith keeps his footwork light and swift, moving his body with his leading leg to avoid the slicing and stabbing of the woman’s hands. There’s definitely something about her style that puts Keith on edge. Maybe it’s how her nostrils flare and suddenly she’s slicing where Keith meant to step. Wary, Keith tries to keep out of her reach. Unfortunately, she’s wretchedly fast, and the next strike comes for his sternum as he’s shifting his balance.

Keith closes his fingers around her’s with a sharp exhale, an inch in front of his chest. She’s grinning—until she isn’t, the slash of a smile sliding off her face with the realization that whatever her power is, it isn’t working. Not anymore.

And that’s when it’s Keith’s turn to smile.

“Oh, sorry, did you need that?” he murmurs, smooth as silk, and the flash of fear in her gaze is so satisfying, Keith feels disgusted with himself.

But he forgets for a moment that her body bears the results of hours of more than just practicing with a power. Her foot stomps down on his instep and she twists out of his grip with a feral snarl. Keith staggers back, biting back an inhuman sound of his own.

“You smell cocky,” she hisses, and when she lunges next, Keith is too slow to stop the explosion of pain across his cheekbone.

He drops backwards, rolling and popping back to his feet with an extra gap of breathable air between them. She crosses the space too swift, slicing and punching in quick succession. It’s only because of Keith’s honed reaction time that he’s holding his own, blocking and redirecting blows that could break bones. Over the woman’s shoulder, the big one is done spitting teeth from pulpy gums. He lumbers towards them as Keith takes advantage of an opening in the woman’s defence. She ends up on her back, gagging in surprise, while Keith backs up further.

The man swipes at Keith with a fist thrice the size of any normal man’s. It’s slow, and Keith easily ducks out of the way. The brick wall takes the blow instead, cracking the clay and spewing dust. Another swipe bursts a garbage bag and the ground is littered with rolling bottles and old food. The woman is on her feet and advancing fast, swerving behind her companion to block Keith’s view of her.

They work well together—or at least, the woman works well with her partner. The big demon, on the other hand, is a beast all on his own. He’s more of a distraction, drawing in Keith’s attention and giving the woman openings. At least he’s slow.

It doesn’t take much for Keith to lure him into punching a wall again. When the man reels back, forcing his partner to jump away lest she be crushed, Keith zeroes in with a series of kicks to the muscle above his knees that crumples his foundation. When the big demon next tries to make a grab, Keith simply sidesteps and allows him to stagger face first into the brick.

The woman darts in immediately. They exchange a flurry of blows and swipes, but she seems unused to fighting without the use of her power, and it’s clearly put her on edge. Keith pushes his advantage until she slips and puts too much force behind one punch. Keith dodges and grabs her wrist. With a yank, he throws her over his hip and follows as she hits the ground. In an instant he has her pinned, arm locked beneath him. For a moment the only sound is their heavy breathing. A quick glance assures Keith that the other one is still out for the count—good. He can focus on her, then.

“You said you smelled my intent,” says Keith softly, chest still heaving slightly from exertion. “Since I’m looking for someone, you knew. You didn’t like me being near the bar—why?”

The woman responds by spitting at him. He lets his weight rest on her arm. She lets out a gurgling snarl, baring her teeth as if that will make the pain cease.

“Just how specific can your weird sniffing get?” he asks as he increases the pressure. “I’m looking for someone. That isn’t enough that you’d try to scare me off—so you know I’m looking for a certain individual. Not some petty thief. A demon.”

Her lip curls, eyes staring at him balefully. Keith takes that as an answer and continues, “You wouldn’t run me off unless you’re acting as a bodyguard for someone in the bar—someone who I’m possibly searching for.”

As he says it, Keith’s heart starts beating faster, as if he hadn’t just fought off two unjustly strong criminals and the adrenaline is draining steadily from aching muscles. It’s possible that the sick fuck—the same demon who destroyed his home, landed Shiro in a coma, and took the lives of those who might have become family—is sitting at a booth, eating fries and watching the baseball game.

The thought consumes him, and he doesn’t notice a third demon until sound leaves him and stars explode in front of his eyes. When Keith lands, it’s in a whirl of motion and the pop of a limb. Pain sinks fiery claws into his elbow. He gasps a single breath as he tries to rise and then he’s sent careening into a pile of garbage. Great. Not an augmented demon, then, just ridiculously strong.

Keith has enough time to turn his head and set his sights on the interruption to think, _Oh, that’s a baseball bat._

He twists in time to avoid a direct blow to the head, but the blunt end lands on his shoulder instead. The force travels in a straight line from clavicle to dislocated elbow. It’s possible he screams.

The demon is saying something, but it’s like his ears have been stuffed full of cotton. At least his depth perception isn’t lost, Keith reasons, as he gathers the strength in his legs and dives out of the way of another strike. The bat lands with a muffled shattering sound, clearer to Keith as the cotton falls away. With distance between himself and the demon, Keith spins around to take stock of the situation.

His right arm is a no-go. Moving turns the raw pain into a marrow-deep agony, but pinning the limb while running does little to mute the fire. The big man is still out cold, but the woman is clawing her way to standing, using the wall as a crutch. Her expression is worryingly furious. Meanwhile, the newcomer, in a dress shirt and slacks, is genially swinging his aluminum bat like a sword, hair slicked back from a widow’s peak. He has a different aura than the other two—as if this is a game, not a job. The quirk of his lips seals it.

 _Dangerous_ , scream Keith’s instincts.

The woman’s wordless snarl turns into a sharp smile.

Keith realizes quickly that this isn’t a fight he’s going to win in his current condition. They’ve got the nearest exit blocked, and the fire escape is a dud with his useless arm, but there’s still a path to the next street over behind him. Keith is confident in his speed, but all the same he can’t be sure he’ll be able to outrun the woman. They share a similar handicap, but now there’s also the tall demon to take into account, who is watching Keith decide on a plan with an amused smirk.

Shit, he’s utterly screwed.

Gritting his teeth, Keith tenses his legs. They already feel topped with lactic acid. The woman drops low and shoots forward before he has the opportunity to book it. It’s too late to run; Keith goes in for a kick. She loses speed to dodge, and the preparations for her next attack are ruined when Keith goes on the offensive. His right hook catches her on the jaw, jerking her head sharply to the side. The returning backhand deflects off a hasty block. Keith’s frustrations mount steadily as his speed begins to fall just shy of the demon’s. He lands fewer hits, finds fewer openings, and soon enough she’s taking the advantage and forcing Keith’s back against the wall.

The only positive is that Suits is taking his time, idly tapping his bat against the fire escape. Keith recognizes that he needs to drop the woman before another demon enters the fray—otherwise he’s a dead man.

“Well, this isn’t a very fair fight, is it?”

Keith lets a curse slide out unbidden. A fourth demon is stepping into the shadows cast thick between the buildings. His features are hidden by a hood, but as he steps in he drops it. Keith doesn’t get the opportunity for his brain to recognize the long nose or copper skin—the woman slams her heel into his injured elbow. Pain clouds Keith’s vision, and then he’s being thrown to the ground. Sharp nails dig into the nape of his neck.

“You—” begins Suits.

“It isn’t a good idea to fight. You know it’s better to stop. Safer.”

Everyone freezes. Then, reluctantly, the weight on Keith’s back alleviates. Keith takes the opportunity to roll away and scramble to his feet, grit leaving dents in his cheek and palms. The conscious demons are staring at the young man at the mouth of the alley.

“You want to forget this man’s face, and mine, and the fight behind the bar—as if it never happened.”

Keith watches as the demons trade truly baffled expressions. Suits looks at his bat and turns it in his hand, visibly wondering why he’s holding it. Meanwhile the woman blinks rapidly, face twitching spasmodically as she fights Lance’s persuasion.

“While the scuffle was good, you realize it’s for the best if you let go of your will to fight,” Lance pushes again. With every word, their agency is steadily stripped from them as their own will is replaced with one of Lance’s making. Despite the pain addling his brain, Keith can’t help but listen in awe to Lance construct actions out of carefully chosen words.

“You don’t want to hold your bat anymore,” says Lance to the man. “You think it feels a little too heavy and rough in your hands. You don’t think it’s a very good weapon—not enough impact. You want to get rid of it.”

The bat goes soaring into the mound of garbage bags.

“You want to go home,” says Lance to the woman, “with this man here. You both want to pick up your unconscious friend.” The demons kneel by their fallen comrade and each take an arm. “You want to bring him somewhere to lay down and rest. You think it’s a good idea right now.”

They leave. Keith stares at their receding backs, until they turn the corner and vanish from sight—then his gaze fixates on Lance, who is looking at him with a neutral expression falling into something more like a grimace.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Keith hears Lance mutter.

“That,” says Keith, feeling something hot and wet and not saliva dribble down his chin, “was incredible.”

—and then he pitches forward to embrace the concrete.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again, art by the lovely [dodothebard](http://dodothebard.tumblr.com/tagged/klancebb)!!


	3. Chapter 3

Unfortunately for Keith—in his own opinion at least—he doesn’t black out. His brain, a mess of pain and high blood pressure, doesn’t seem to want to let him rest. Instead, he’s forced to focus on the perpetual lightning strike crackling within his shoulder and elbow.

Lance is at his side, a hand going to the injured side without realizing. Keith’s senses short out. He definitely screams, bites down on the end of the shriek and nearly cleaves right through his own tongue.

“Holy fuck,” says Lance, followed by an impressive list of cusses that don’t even sound English anymore. “You’re messed up bad.”

“No shit,” wheezes Keith. He tries to move, to get to his feet or knees or hell, just his good elbow would be nice—but his left side is fire and electricity and he wonders if this is anything like how his family felt inside their burning house. The thought makes him think of suffocating mud and he splutters a hysterical laugh if only to remind himself that he’s not dreaming.

“Okay, okay, hold on.” Lance keeps talking, but Keith is trying not to think. If he thinks, there’s pain—and the memory of mud.

But then there’s a pressure on his arm—the one that isn’t a dislocated, fractured mess—and Keith is being dragged upright. The world tilts and flickers. It’s worse than the nights that ended with tables covered in empty shot glasses. Then he’s—they’re—moving forward. Keith realizes belatedly that the only reason he’s moving still is because Lance has taken up the majority of his dead weight. If the demons come back and they’re like this—

“Stop that,” snaps Lance when Keith tries to stand on his own. “You’ll just fall over again. I told you, I know a place we can go.”

“Demons—” attempts Keith.

“I know.” There’s sweat gathering in nervous dewdrops at Lance’s hairline. His eyes flick past shadows and windows that Keith, in good health, would have been watching. “Hopefully it’ll take them awhile to get home.”

Keith stops trying to talk when more sticky wetness bubbles at his lips. Lance leads them through backstreets that Keith can’t remember if he recognizes, barely pausing for break. Every passing car makes his body stiffen under Keith’s sagging weight. There’s fear there. Keith wonders why Lance walked into that alley in the first place.

He barely registers stairs under his feet, but he catches on when Lance’s breathing turns laboured and he starts swearing under his breath. Keith feels some of his senses return to him after that, rebooted with the need to lessen the burden he’s become. His legs straighten beneath him, and his eyes focus on the apartment hall stretching out beyond them.

“Sorry,” tries Keith.

“It’s fine,” huffs Lance.

They stop in front of a door. Keith sways dangerously, and Lance’s hold tightens again. It takes several knocks—one hesitant and the rest impatient—for the door to swing open. Keith doesn’t get a good look at who answers before he and Lance are stumbling in.

“I feel really bad about this,” says Lance, “but this guy kind of needs your help.”

“Oh—Um—Hello Lance, come in.”

Keith stubs his toe over the doorjamb, but it’s the least of his varied aches and pains. His gaze flicks over his surroundings—chipped countertop, grimy fridge covered in colourful pictures and magnets, toast half buttered—but he can’t focus on the important things like escape routes and possible dangers. With Lance gripping him upright, Keith figures knowing the dangers would be a waste of his time at this point regardless.

“Oh my,” says whomever owns the apartment, a looming presence to Keith’s right.

“Yeah,” agrees Lance. “He had a run in with some shady characters.”

“Demons,” croaks Keith.

There’s a pause, and then, “...Oh my,” repeats Lance’s acquaintance.

“So he kind of needs to get patched up quick,” continues Lance, voice full of a smile but his grip starting to loosen under Keith’s weight.

“Of—of course, set him down here.”

Lumpy cushions sink under Keith’s weight, and then he’s blinking groggily into the incandescent light hanging above a rather tall young woman. Her face is a crumpled frown, hesitant in kindness while her hands are already being wiped with a white cloth—an alcohol wipe?

 _She’s prepared_ , notes Keith as he sways in his seat.

“My arm—” he begins to say, and then her fingers touch his elbow gingerly and he tips backwards.

“I’m so sorry!” panics the woman. For a moment she examines the sight of Keith’s swollen and bruising joint, then rounds on Lance and demands, “Why didn’t you tell me his elbow was dislocated?”

“Uh,” says Lance, wide-eyed as he looks down at Keith. “My bad? A bat was involved, maybe.”

“Definitely,” heaves Keith, screwing his eyes shut as he straightens himself. “Definitely a bat.”

“Definitely a bat,” repeats Lance helpfully.

The woman sucks her teeth loudly and Lance visibly shrinks back, expression sheepish. “We’ll have to set it back into the socket,” she says to Keith, hands outstretched towards him but not touching. “Will you be okay without pain medication?”

Keith doesn’t open his eyes. “Fuck me up, doc.”

Lance’s laugh dies halfway. Keith can picture the withering glare on the woman’s face even if he’s too focused on _not feeling pain_ to open his eyes. The refocusing doesn’t help. At all. He doesn’t think he can feel his hand anymore.

“We need to move your arm,” she says soothingly, the fire in his arm in direct contrast to her mellow voice. “Lance, I’ll need your help.”

“Sounds terrible.”

“ _Lance.”_

“ _Shay.”_

“Please,” hisses Keith against the pain, “just set it.”

There’s a moment of silence, a shuffle, and then a hand is gripping his wrist firmly, the other sliding up his forearm.

“Take his bicep between your hands,” orders the woman, Shay. Keith feels Lance’s long fingers wrap around his upper arm. “Stay firm, okay? Now—ah, what’s your name?”

Keith tries to focus on the spiderweb veins behind his eyelids as he practically spits, “Keith.”

“Okay, Keith,” Shay says in her calming voice that is doing absolutely _nothing_ for Keith right about now. “We’re going to start. Please try to remain as still as possible.”

She waits for him to nod his assent before the pulling begins. He feels a mounting pressure, bone grating on bone where they shouldn’t. The hands—Lance’s—on his bicep tighten. Keith acknowledges for a moment that he’ll probably have bruises there later on, and then his eyes are flashing open and he’s gasping in air. Choking on oxygen is the only thing that stops him from screaming, the air too precious a commodity to waste on such a thing. With a disgustingly satisfying pop, and a sensation like jelly alongside the pain, Keith feels his elbow slide back into place.

“Fuck,” breathe Keith and Lance simultaneously.

“Don’t move yet—” A hand interrupts Keith’s immediate bid to rise. He freezes, then forces himself to relax as Shay gently rests his arm in a sling. “No more fights if you can help it, for at least a couple weeks. Okay?”

Keith flexes his fingers. His elbow still aches something fierce, but it isn’t on fire like it was before. He looks up into the cautiously concerned face of Shay and says, “Thanks. A lot.”

“You’re welcome,” she says. The following few minutes are spent cleaning up the worst of his scrapes and ensuring he’s drank some water. When he’s patched up and feeling more present, Shay straightens, examines her work, and then she’s rounding on Lance, who flinches back. “You. Kitchen. Now, please.”

She trods purposefully to the dining area, not even fully closed off from the rest of the apartment. Lance follows her anyway, lips pursed, leaving Keith to study his bandages. He’s barely decided his hands are fine when he hears Lance’s voice carry from the kitchen.

“I know, _I know_ , but you don’t understand—”

“I don’t see or hear from you for _weeks,”_ snaps Shay, voice raising before it tapers back off into forced calm. Keith stops checking his injuries to eavesdrop. “You pack up and leave and don’t look back, and then come _waltzing_ back into my apartment with a—a bloodied up stranger—”

“He’s not a stranger,” begins Lance, but Keith can hear the wince in his words. “I mean, he kinda is, but I’ve talked to him before—”

“Oh,” interrupts Shay, “so you’ll talk to some random on the street but not your _friends_.”

“Shay,” sighs Lance. “I’m sorry. I can’t—I did something shitty and I can’t—God. Just. I’m sorry.”

“And Hunk?”

A lengthy pause. “What about him?”

“Lance.”

Keith shifts restlessly on the lumpy couch.

“You didn’t look back,” repeats Shay, “and I’m the one that got to see Hunk facing the disappearance of his best friend. You owe an explanation to him—to all of us—but most of all to the man that has been there for you since you were _children_.”

“I—I know that, but I can’t.”

A loud bang causes Keith to jump. He stares towards the kitchen—had Shay just slammed her hand down on the counter? It sure sounded like it.

Shay’s voice is especially cold. “Right now, you disgust me, Lance.”

It’s quiet for a beat longer, and then, so quietly that Keith nearly misses it, Lance says, “I know. Sorry. Thanks for helping him.”

Keith isn’t sure whether Lance is talking about him or Hunk. He appears in the junction between kitchen and living room, eyes resting on Keith and his expression carefully blank—yet Keith can read every divot in his face.

“You good to go?” asks Lance.

“Yeah,” says Keith as he rises to his feet. His elbow twinges, but it’s a tickle compared to earlier. “Are you? Good to go, I mean.”

Lance’s eyebrow arches in question. “Yeah, ‘course.”

He heads to the door, and Keith follows. At the entrance to the kitchen, he pauses. Shay stands facing away from him, one hand on the counter, head tilted back to face the faintly flickering lights.

“Thanks for, uh, popping my arm back into place,” says Keith.

The young woman turns slowly to give him a smile; pleasant, utterly polite, and lacking in something he cannot place. “You’re welcome,” she says again. “Take care of yourself—”

Her words break off, a silent continuation hanging in the air, but Keith can hear it.

 _And Lance_.

He can’t promise that, so Keith just mirrors her smile and walks out after Lance.

By street level, Keith is back to battling his grogginess. Lance doesn’t seem to think he’s in need of a crutch anymore, which is fine by Keith. He doesn’t want to hang off the guy for the rest of the night. At the curb, Lance pauses to let Keith catch up and stop beside him.

“I’ll call you a cab,” says Lance, already getting out his phone.

Keith looks up and down the road. Cars are parked densely on either side, and half the parking meters are straight up missing. Lance’s voice is soft as he relays the address—a few blocks from the bar, not too far, but enough to swing around Keith’s mental compass. When he hangs up, Keith studies the other man out of the corner of his eye.

There’s definitely something gnawing at him, and it isn’t hard to guess what it is. Their conversation on the bridge was chilly enough, but seeing firsthand an acquaintance—a _friend_ —calling Lance out on his selfish idiocy, well that’s another story. It’s obvious Lance doesn’t enjoy being self-excluded, and yet…

Keith finds himself wanting to invite Lance to the library.

“What?”

Keith blinks and looks at Lance, who, in turn, is raising his eyebrows at him incredulously. Ah, he said that out loud.

“At noon,” blurts out Keith instead of trying to patch his slip up. “You should come to the library tomorrow.”

Lance scoffs. “Are you kidding? I _know_ Hunk works there, genius.”

“He doesn’t come in till later.”

“Then why would I—”

“It’s quiet.”

Lance blinks. “So?”

“...I get bored,” says Keith. It’s a struggle not to make it sound like a question. It’s true that Hunk won’t be in the next day until later on, while Keith takes the morning shift. The only issue is _why_ Keith is inviting him in the first place. Maybe it has something to do with Shay’s wordless request, itching at the back of his mind.

For a long moment, Lance says nothing. His gaze flicks over Keith’s shoulder just as a taxi pulls up. With his hand on the door, Keith is expecting silence is his answer, but then Lance is stuffing his hands into his pockets with a neutral expression.

“Maybe I’ll swing by,” he says.

Before Keith can respond, Lance is spinning on his heel and walking briskly down the street. Keith watches him go before he shuts the car door, amazed at first, but also feeling an odd sort of satisfaction. 

* * *

“Good morning!” greets Coran the moment Keith steps over the threshold of the library. “Excited for another beautiful day?”

 _Stuck inside_ , adds Keith silently. Out loud, he says, “Always. No Pidge today?”

“She couldn’t make it.” At the desk, Coran slides over a mug of coffee for Keith. “Will you be okay in the afternoon?”

Not as though Keith hasn’t already done this same weekday split shift—Pidge in the morning, Hunk in the evening, and Keith linking the two—for weeks on end. Careful of his sore arm, the sling ditched at home, he lifts the mug off the table.

“Yeah,” says Keith as he inhales the aroma of coffee appreciatively.

“Great, then I’ll leave the library in your care!”

He says that, but Coran doesn’t leave the building for another hour, snooping around the shelves looking for books out of place and empty wrappers. By the time he’s gone, Keith has already put away the returns, stacked the holds, and finished his second coffee, all using one arm. It’s not yet noon, but Keith seats himself at the front desk as if it is. The _maybe_ lingers in Lance’s voice at the back of Keith’s head, yet he can’t help the expectancy.

He nibbles at the cookies Hunk left behind last week, a little too hard but still good. He checks out a few books, helps someone sign up a library card, passes over a hold. Noon arrives. Keith cleans up a puddle of water by the entrance. Quarter past, he nearly refuses to leave his desk when an older woman asks him for help finding a DVD. When he returns five minutes later, there’s no one hovering about the entrance except a father and a toddler discussing superheroes as they walk in. At half past, Keith decides Lance is a no-show. He can’t blame him.

Yet there’s a sliver of disappointment there. As if it’s dust, Keith brushes the feeling away and gets to work straightening bookshelves.

One in the afternoon finds Keith idly reading bad synopses in the science fiction section. He snorts, puts the book back, and finds another to raise his eyebrows at. They’re just as terrible as the young adult novels. Keith wonders how authors get away with it; people shitting on teen novels for having protagonists with special snowflake syndrome, choosing between saving the world or true love, when so-called adult books are suffering from the same issues.

He’s shoving a book back into place with a derisive snort when Lance appears. They nearly collide with how brisk Lance is moving, whipping around the corner as he is with eyebrows drawn. He’s the first to flinch back, eyes popping wide, even though Keith is  just blinking at him with a hand outstretched towards the shelf.

“You came,” says Keith in surprise.

Lance clears his throat and tries to look unruffled. “Uh, yeah,” he says. “I got held up.”

“Right.”

They look at each other for a moment that stretches far longer than it has any right to. It’s incredibly awkward. Keith breaks eye contact first to pluck another novel from the shelf.

“A man and a robot develop a forbidden bond that could lead to intergalactic warfare.” Keith pauses and makes a thoughtful sound through his nose. “Bad.”

“What was _that?”_ says Lance, taking the out.

Keith flips over to look at the cover. “Figures. Look at those pecs.”

He shows Lance the cover, and the other man wrinkles his nose as he snorts. “Way too defined. Is he a robot?”

“Cyborg, probably.”

“Oh, yeah, gotta be part human for, _y’know_.” Lance tsks.

Keith blinks at the cover. “Part human for what?”

“ _Y’know_ ,” repeats Lance.

“I know _what?”_

“Don’t make me say it,” whispers Lance, squinting at Keith like he’s trying to figure out whether he’s bluffing. Unfortunately, Keith is utterly baffled, until he really looks down at the cover again, at just how defined the abs and pecs are of the hypersexualized man on the cover—

“Oh,” says Keith.

“Thank god,” wheezes Lance.

Keith frowns. “This—I’m pretty sure this is supposed to be in the Harlequin section or—”

“It’s technically science fiction,” says Lance, plucking the book from Keith’s hands and surreptitiously putting it back on the shelf. “A gift,” he adds, “for the next fool.”

Barely a second later, Keith is pressing the book back into Lance’s hands.

“Ah,” he says after a moment, “I see what you did there.”

Keith shoots Lance a grin as he scoffs.

The book returns to the shelf, but Keith’s dismissal of plot and Lance’s judgement of art continues down the row. Few books are spared from their scrutinization. More than one visitor glances at them with annoyance—and the looks only increase when the giggles start.

“Listen to this,” says Lance, hushed, his voice strained with the effort of keeping his cool. “She’s got to save the world, but _wait_ , what about the boy she _loves?_ Girl, you’re the worst hero.”

“She’s got a lot to think about,” says Keith mildly, even while grimacing down at the sixteenth book cover featuring a faceless girl with long wavy hair.

“The entire world, or a dude, who probably treats her like shit at some point during the novel, let’s be honest—”

“Hm, sounds like you have something personal against these novels.”

“Says the guy who sniffs— _loudly_ —every time he picks up a book with a beach scene.”

Keith catches himself just before inhaling sharply through his nose, book in hand. “...I do not.”

“Do too,” scoffs Lance. “Okay, how about this classic. I gotta know.”

“Know what?” asks Keith as he shoves another disappointingly cliché romance back onto the shelf. He looks up to see Lance waving about _Twilight_. Keith nearly dry heaves.

“ _This_ ,” says Lance with emphasis, giving it a shake, “is a _generation-defining_ story.”

“Get it away from me,” deadpans Keith, backing down the row.

Lance pursues, a step in time to every shake of the musty 2005 classic. “What team, Keith?”

“No.”

“ _What team?”_

“Wildcats,” says Keith as he spins on his heel.

Lance splutters a laugh. “ _Not_ what I wanted but—hold on! You have to answer the question!”

They speedwalk aggressively from one end of the library to another until they’re halted in the magazine section by a particularly vicious scowl from a petite ninety year old. Properly ashamed, they make their way back to the rows of young adult novels.

“Edward or Jacob?” whispers Lance out of the corner of his mouth as they walk back.

“Neither,” says Keith.

“Liar.” Lance pauses. “I was Team Jacob.”

Keith whipped around, mouth hanging open in utter offence—much to the apparent delight of Lance.

“I _knew it_ ,” he says gleefully. “You look like a vampire groupie. God, I bet you went on the internet and defended his stone cold di—”

“Shut up,” groans Keith. “I didn’t—I never—That’s gross. Edward is gross.”

“But you were totally Team Edward,” persists Lance.

Keith tries to school his expression into neutrality. “You can’t prove anything.”

Lance nearly _howls_ his delight. Keith can feel the ninety year old’s piercing gaze singe the back of his head until they whisk around the corner of a bookshelf.

When they’re out of sight, Keith snatches _Twilight_ from Lance’s hands and jams it into the first empty space he can find. Lance makes an offended squawking sound, and Keith folds his arms across his chest.

“Don’t work here, you can’t complain,” he says.

The descent of Lance’s expression into the facial equivalent of a barren tundra is so swift that Keith nearly misses it as it transitions into resigned calm.

“Yeah, well,” says Lance, and then no more.

Keith tightens the fold of his arms until his elbow flares up in pain, casting his awkward gaze to the shelf once more.

This time, Lance picks up _Catching Fire_ and says, “Gale or Peeta?”

“Finnick,” says Keith immediately, and Lance grins.

Making fun of books doesn’t lose its novelty as they continue on. It’s neutral territory, teetering on the edge of anything to do with Lance’s past life—which surrounds them, Keith realizes. Coran hired him to replace Lance, and the man must be aware of that, but nothing he does or says points Keith in the way of resentment or jealousy. Keith finds that hard to believe.

He gets his opportunity to ask when he notices Lance getting fidgety. It begins with fiddling dog-eared pages, and evolves into shifting from foot to foot, angling himself to face the clock, glancing far too often and then his brow furrowing as he catches himself. Keith watches him between bad jokes and scathing reviews.

Eventually, Keith is prompted to say, “Hunk starts at three.”

Lance flinches. His shoulders drop in resignation. “I know.”

“Then chill out, you’ve got time.”

With a grimace, Lance says, “I know that, but it’s not going to stop me from being paranoid he’ll pop in early. He does that, you know.”

“I know.” Keith straightens the spines of the books in front of him. “You’ve got a ton of places to hide. It’s fine, even if he does come in early. I’ll distract him if it comes to that.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I mean—” With a shrug, Keith turns to look Lance dead in the eye, “—you ignoring your best friend is your own business, I won’t ruin that for you.”

Lance’s wince is clearly visceral. “You sound like Shay.”

“I haven’t quite got the ice queen anger down, but thanks.”

“It’s just better th—”

“Better this way, yeah, yeah. I still think it’s shitty.”

Lance shoots him a scowl, but it’s weak. “Is that any way to speak to the guy that saved your ass?”

“Oh, yeah.” As if in reminder, Keith’s elbow twinges painfully. The memory of Lance appearing, the world darkening and brightening at random, words weaving alternate actions upon unwilling participants—the awe returns to Keith in full force. When he looks at Lance, he’s not just a guy bowing his head while getting chewed out, or laughing about fake dreamy characters; Lance is a misfit, powerful and scared of that fact. It’s with as much sincerity as Keith can possibly muster that he says, “Thanks for that—saving my ass. It was…”

 _Cool_ stays stuck in his throat.

Lance brushes away his thanks with a wave of his hand. “I was joking. ‘Sides, Shay was the one that fixed you up.”

“I would’ve been far past anything she could’ve patched if you hadn’t stepped in,” insists Keith. It feels weird to force praise on a reluctant saviour.

“Maybe,” says Lance. “Maybe, but…” His eyes grow hazy.

Keith frowns at him and says the first thing that comes to mind—”Your power?”

The grimace tells all.

“You used it to save my hide,” huffs Keith, “so you shouldn’t be kicking yourself about it. Right?”

For once, Lance doesn’t immediately fight him, instead hitching his shoulders in a reluctant shrug. “Right.”

His eyes flick to the clock again. Keith tries, and fails, not to roll his eyes.

“Alright, just get out,” drawls Keith. When Lance shoots him an exaggerated pout, Keith adds, “Come back tomorrow or something.”

Lance opens his mouth as if to argue, but shuts it and shrugs again. It seems like acceptance. Keith walks Lance to the front door just as students from the nearest high school start trickling in. Watching the hunch of his shoulders and the duck of his head, it occurs to Keith that someone like Lance was never meant to be alone.

“Friendly reminder,” says Keith as Lance is about to pass over the threshold, “that Hunk misses you.”

“Friendly reminder,” says Lance, turning to scowl at him, “that mentioning Hunk is still a low blow.”

Keith grins—until his mouth slackens. “Hey Lance. Can I… tell him you were here?”

Lance, predictably, frowns. “...Why?”

“So he knows you’re safe. Unhurt. Hanging around libraries instead of cesspools.”

This time, Keith can’t take Lance’s shrug as an answer.

“Seriously,” he persists while Lance looks at the clock yet again. “Can I?”

“He might expect to see me,” says Lance, brow furrowing deeper. Keith just stares at him until he heaves a sigh and says, “Fine. Tell him—but don’t make it sound like this is going to be a _thing_. Just that I… passed through.”

“Right.”

Lance doesn’t wave as he leaves and neither does Keith.

When Hunk comes in half an hour later, Keith tells him, and the sun rises on his face. 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's cottage time!!! i'll reply to y'all when i return from the woods ( ˘ ³˘)♥
> 
> remember to appreciate and reboogle [dodothebard's](http://dodothebard.tumblr.com/tagged/klancebb%0A%20) heckin rad art!!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's always really refreshing hanging out with people who have no idea wtf voltron is :')) also just like. functioning adults in their mid to late twenties. also cottages. AND SNOW. 
> 
> anyway we're a third of the way through HURRAH!!

Something shifts in Keith’s life, and looking back on it he might decide that it happened the moment Lance stepped foot in the library the first time since leaving. The second time Lance visits is much like the first: an absent Pidge, a brief Coran and an empty library; the third involves Lance dissing the coffee Coran buys; the fourth sees Lance walking through the doors with a steaming cup in either hand. He learns Lance kept busy helping an acquaintance do construction work across town, and that he blew a lot of money sleeping in cheap hostels to avoid less savoury places. Keith also learns Hunk is a light sleeper, Pidge has a love hate relationship with peas, Coran doesn’t exist in photos without a moustache, and Lance’s first crush was Spike from Cowboy Bebop. By the time Lance starts adding espresso shots to his coffee, Keith finds his mouth curving into a smile too quickly, his stomach squeezing in anticipation, and he comes to a few conclusions.

One—Lance has great taste in coffee.

Two—he enjoys Lance’s company, and even _looks forward to it_.

Three—he considers Lance a friend.

A friend.

“—a friend,” says Keith to Shiro’s prone form, sounding just as incredulous out loud as it does in his head. “Oh no.”

It’s not a Tuesday, but Keith’s entire schedule has been thrown off piece by piece, what’s one more thing to add to the list? He can just imagine the sort of amused expression Shiro would be wearing if he was awake. Keith, about ready to panic, because of _friendship._ Thus far, he’s dodged months of potential friendly socialization—with Hunk, Pidge, Coran, even Allura—by maintaining a certain barrier that Shiro used to call his _anti-pal vibes_. Now Lance has stomped all over those vibes with more vigor than Keith thought possible, and Hunk has begun using the whole situation with Lance as an excuse to become even friendlier with Keith.

The problem is there’s a reason he doesn’t want to get closer to anyone, and now they’re worming their way into his life—and Keith can’t blame anyone but himself for extending a hand to Lance in the first place.

“Oh no,” repeats Keith with a sigh. “Shiro, I’m doomed.”

Shiro says nothing, but Keith still wonders if he can hear every word being said. He wonders, too, that if— _when_ —he wakes up he’ll make fun of Keith for using him as a diary.

“Asshole,” says Keith.

Shiro’s laugh echoes in his imagination.

He’s leaving the hospital room when he sees Pidge. Instantly, he slams the door behind him, heart in his throat, as Pidge turns at the sound to stare at him.

“The hell are you doing here?” Keith snaps out.

Pidge blinks. “Am I not allowed to be?”

He takes in the juice box, unopened, in her hands. Her hair is a mess of bedhead, and she’s got a pair of glasses not her own hooked onto the collar of her rumpled shirt. She looks tired, and Keith remembers that she’s missed the past four shifts.

“Sorry,” he says when he’s got his head on straight.

She cocks an eyebrow but doesn’t call him out further. Instead, Pidge plucks the straw from her juice box and stabs it into the foil. Keith stands there, wondering whether he can escape with a _see you later_ , as Pidge scrutinizes him with the straw in her mouth.

Then, finally, she says, “I’m visiting my brother. You?”

Keith blinks at her. The shadows under her eyes are dark, but her gaze is as sharp as ever. He finds no reason to lie to her.

“Same,” he says.

“What happened to yours?” she asks.

Something in his chest tightens. “Demon attack. Yours?”

“Same,” she says.

Pidge sucks the box dry and tosses it in a high arc over her shoulder. It lands in a garbage bin, somehow.

“I need coffee,” she says, and Keith follows her down to the lobby.

The sunlight coming in through the hospital’s coffee shop is hot, unfiltered by cool breezes, but neither of them move from the table they share. It keeps the coffees sitting almost untouched between them from losing heat.

“Is he going to be okay?” asks Keith when the moment of silence between them stretches into ten minutes.

Pidge breathes in as if drawing herself from her thoughts. “Probably,” she says, the word coming out like a sigh. “He was lucky. Demon only took his leg.”

“His _leg?_ ”

“Mm.” Pidge smiles, like the idea of it is something unbelievable. “Tore it right off.”

Keith looks down at his coffee. The steam swirls in endlessly churning loops. “That’s fucked,” he says.

“Yeah.” Pidge sips her drink, pauses, then proceeds to chug half the cup. Keith can’t help but stare until she puts it down and wipes her mouth with her palm. “So,” she says breezily, “is your brother doing okay?”

“No,” says Keith, and he’s startled by how easily the word comes out. Nothing gets trapped in his throat as he continues, “He’s comatose. Has been for six months.”

He watches the twitch of Pidge’s eyebrow, the pull of her lip, the regret and unease—until she pulls herself together and chugs the rest of her coffee. Keith grimaces for her.

“Sorry,” she says after practically slamming the cup down on the table.

“I asked, you asked.” Keith shrugs. “It’s only fair. Besides I—I trust you won’t go… talking about it. With Coran or Hunk, you know?”

“I get it,” says Pidge, and Keith trusts her. “Makes you wonder, though.”

Keith cocks an eyebrow in a silent question.

“What might you do in self defence,” she elaborates. “If someone came after me, what’s the best I could do? Make their hair staticy?” Pidge’s hands curl tightly around the empty cup. “What could Matt have done if he could do _more_?”

When Pidge looks up at Keith for an answer he doesn’t have, all he can think about is how much simpler it would be if there was no wishing for _more_. More never guaranteed anything.

* * *

Pidge comes in on Saturday to Hunk asking how bad her flu was and if she would prefer tea to coffee. Keith says nothing about the hospital, and neither does she.

The day continues as normal as the week before—or as normal as it can be now that Keith feels a kinship with Pidge that he never felt before, and Hunk seems to be latching onto him with the newfound knowledge that Keith is a link to his hiding best friend. Only Coran blusters about as per usual, his laugh audible from the second floor as the rest of them hang around the front desk.

It’s normal—until Lance walks through the doors.

Keith’s stomach drops while his heart lodges itself firmly in his throat. Neither Pidge nor Hunk have noticed; Pidge, sitting beside Keith, is staring at the computer screen intently while Hunk leans against the counter asking her endless questions. Lance freezes in the doorway, eyes fixated on Hunk’s back, and Keith is swearing colourfully in his head because _does Lance not remember that they all work together on Saturdays—_

“So mean,” sighs Hunk when Pidge finally slaps his hand away. He turns to lean on his elbow, positioned such that if he turns, he’ll have a full view of a frozen Lance.

Naturally, Keith panics. “Hunk!” he squeaks, curses himself for sounding so unnatural. “About those cookies.”

“Yeah?”

Keith extends a hand out onto the counter and starts frantically gesturing at Lance to get the hell out, while Hunk has his questioning gaze trained on Keith.

“Did you change something about the recipe? Maybe a little more salt? The flavour was a lot better this time around—not that they aren’t always great, I just mean this time especially is amazing—”

He blabbers on, and he can feel Pidge’s gaze boring a hole into the side of his head, and even Hunk appears shocked that Keith is taking such an intense interest in his recipes. He kind of wants to bury himself alive at this point, but Lance is _still_ there.

Keith risks shooting a look at Lance. He’s trying to help him and the guy won’t turn tail—

Oh. Keith sees the change in Lance’s expression; the smooth shift from horrified to resigned to determined. This is it, Keith realizes, and his hand slides off the counter.

Hunk, confused by the sudden silence, waves a hand in front of Keith’s face. A raised eyebrow is all Hunk gets before Keith is leaning back in his chair, palms out to say the situation is out of his hands. It’s obvious when Pidge sees Lance because her breath gets caught in her throat and she subtly chokes on it. Hunk is a second slower.

A second in which Lance is already beside him, hesitantly putting his forearms on the counter.

“Uh, hey,” he says.

Keith half expects the library to erupt. Instead, Hunk is deathly quiet as he stares at Lance like he’s seen a ghost. Nearly two months of nothing and a week of sporadic news—of course Hunk would be uncertain how to react. Keith can see it in the way he tenses up.

Meanwhile, Lance’s gaze is unsteady, flicking from the floor to the desk to Pidge to Hunk’s hands, Hunk’s shoulder, but never Hunk’s face.

“So, uh,” continues Lance when Hunk remains silent, “I thought it was about time I, uh, visited? Yeah.” Somewhere on the second floor, Coran’s laugh sounds off again. Lance’s smiles just barely. “Loud as ever.”

“You’ve only been gone a couple months,” snorts Pidge. “What did you expect?”

The casual dismissal of Lance’s disappearance via Pidge loosens some of the pressure. Lance bites his lower lip, a grin tugging at it, when Pidge offers him a cocked eyebrow and a smile. Keith feels the unease in his gut settle.

But there’s still the issue of Hunk, staring and stock still. It gets to the point that Keith starts to rise to his feet to do _something_ , intervene somehow, distract them to get rid of this awkward tension still clinging to the both of them. However, to everyone’s surprise, Hunk acts first.

“Want a cookie?” offers Hunk, voice shaky, as he leans over the desk to lift up the plate.

Lance blinks at the goods. The line of his shoulders loosen, and he picks out a cookie.

“Thanks,” he says.

To Keith, it’s a strange exchange, but it seems to work for them. Lance nibbles the cookie, Pidge smiles into her hand, and Hunk waits a beat before wrapping Lance up in a bear hug. With a squawk, Lance accidentally crumbles the cookie between his fingers. Hunk squeezes, and Lance hesitantly hugs back. Keith pretends not to notice the way Lance’s lower lip trembles.

When Hunk finally releases him, there’s still some kind of uncertainty, but Hunk is exuding the sun. It’s obvious he’s elated just to see Lance, and Keith feels his stomach squeeze. Lance is trying his best to smother his nervousness. Instead of pointing it out, Keith acts as though he’s succeeding.

“Lance! There you are!”

They all turn to see Coran trotting down the stairs. His grin is broad as he crosses the floor to meet them. When he claps a hand down on a stammering Lance’s shoulder, it’s as though he’s only been gone on vacation, and not more than a month.

“This place is far too quiet without you,” says Coran gustily, clapping again, and then a third time. “Given the note you left Hunk, I was expecting you to take a little more time off.”

Lance stares at him. “You saw the note?”

“Oh yeah,” says Pidge while Hunk shoves a cookie into his mouth as an excuse not to speak. “ _Super_ emo, but not poetic at all.”

At the jab, Lance turns red, but his voice trembles with barely withheld laughter. “Well god, sorry for not being creative enough.”

“Don’t bother practicing,” beams Coran. Before Lance can reply, he adds, “Also if you came here wanting your job back, you’ll have to talk to Keith about that.”

“No,” says Keith immediately, drawing a spluttering laugh out of Pidge. “I’m so close to being able to throw out those gremlins Pidge hangs out with. I’m not about to give up now.”

Solemnly, yet still red in the face, Lance says, “Of course, I understand. One day I’ll duel you for the honour.”

Keith blinks and looks at Hunk. “You so called that.”

Hunk starts laughing, prompting the others to step back to avoid jettisoning crumbs. A confused smile tugs at Lance’s lips, and Coran is simply clapping what could very well turn into a percussion beat against his shoulder, chortling away. Pidge catches Keith’s eye, and they exchange an amused glance. It’s a strange interaction, Keith thinks, but he can’t say he doesn’t like it, being surrounded by people.

* * *

As per usual, they scour the library and lock up, Coran gone an hour previous. This time, there’s a tall young man waiting outside. Keith catches a glimpse of what the library must have been before he was hired. It’s incredible how quickly Lance reintegrated himself back among the people he’d left. The grins and snide remarks and indignant retorts—for someone on the outside looking in, Keith finds it oddly nostalgic. He hitches his backpack higher and walks away to the sounds of rapid fire banter at his back.

“Keith, hold up!”

He pauses mid step and turns to look over his shoulder. Pidge and Hunk both are shooting Lance surprised looks, but the man himself has an eyebrow and a hip cocked.

“Come hang out with us,” says Lance.

Keith blinks, says, “...Alright,” and the usual deviates.

At first Hunk and Pidge don’t seem to know how to react, but Lance wraps them all up in his pace, and it’s like they’re back in the library once again. Having never stayed to hang out with the library crew, Keith doesn’t know what to expect. Turns out it’s nothing more than invading the nearest frozen yogurt place, competing to see who can have the most ridiculous mixture, and getting raucous until the employee tells them to hush or leave.

As they wander down the block towards the park, Keith tries to figure out whether have mango boba and assorted gummies in lactose-free chocolate yogurt is _actually_ good, or just weird. Lance appears at his shoulder quite suddenly, apparently having ended a debate about sushi pizza and pizza sushi.

“Not good?” he asks, shoving a massive spoonful of cookies and cream with sour patch kids into his mouth.

“It looks gross,” provides Pidge.

“It’s… okay?” Keith takes another bite. “I can’t actually tell.”

“Then give it here,” says Lance, swooping in with his own spoon to steal a chunk of Keith’s.

“Hey—!” protests Keith, but Lance is already sticking the spoon into his mouth and screwing up his nose.

“It’s weird,” decides Lance, “but good. Pidge, you try.”

And then it turns into Pidge diving in like a vulture to nab some goods, and Hunk coming around his other side to do the same. They taste Keith’s yogurt mixture and judge it and laugh and Keith thinks, _shit_.

Because it isn’t just Lance anymore, is it? Keith sees them grinning and making fun of each other, _with him,_ and he realizes with a mixture of resignation and awe that yeah, these people—these wonderful, funny, snarky people—they’re his friends.

The problem is friends mean more people that will end up hurt.

* * *

It’s another Tuesday when Allura walks into Shiro’s room to find Keith talking at him. The sight isn’t a surprise, and even though Allura looks at the clipboard at the footboard when he goes silent, she obviously isn’t there to check diagnostics.

“You broke habit last week,” she says, putting down the clipboard.

“Yeah.”

“Something up?”

Keith tilts his head back slightly to look at the doctor. He can feel the curiosity rolling off her in waves. For something so small to pique it, Keith figures the gossip must be slow. In lieu of a proper response, he shrugs.

“Nothing’s changed,” she begins, and Keith snorts. _Changed_. He could argue otherwise, but Allura is not so subtly staring at him.

“Well,” says Keith as he stretches over the back of the chair, listening to his spine pop all the way up, “I’m going to go. Make sure Shiro doesn’t get lost.”

That draws a guilty giggle out of Allura. When Keith reaches the door, she says, “Hold on.”

He turns in the doorway. Pen in hand, Allura is scratching something on a notepad, followed by several—possibly very deep—underlines. She rips it off the pad and steps forward to hand it to Keith. He blinks down at the ten digits.

“If something happens,” she explains, fingers folded tightly around the notepad, “or if you want someone to talk to—I don’t know. Just, if you need me for anything at all, don’t hesitate to call or text.”

“Uh,” says Keith.

Before he can fully articulate, Allura is clapping a hand brusquely on his shoulder, and then she’s out the door in that brisk walk only doctors in television shows seem to have. For a moment longer, Keith continues to stare down at the phone number. The raised bumps of her hard scrawl are noticeable against his fingertips.

It’s a token of trust—of friendship. Keith doesn’t know if he can risk anymore, but when he crumples up the paper, it goes into his pocket and not the trash.

In the hallway, instead of heading towards the elevators, Keith turns right. Further down, six rooms away from Shiro’s, is a shared unit with curtains drawn around each patient. The one closest to the window has the mint green drapes pulled away just enough that Keith can see toes flexing against the sheets.

“There you are,” says Pidge when Keith rounds the curtain. Perched on a stool, she has an orange in hand, creating a wide corkscrew out of its skin. “Now Matt can bother _you_ with boring stories instead.”

In the bed, a dusky-haired young man with round glasses greets Keith with a crooked grin. One leg extends over the sheets, connected to toes trying to landscape the fabric. The other leg is but a swathed stump, hidden in plain sight by a folded pant leg. Like Pidge, his smile curves in a way that’s sardonic and goofy in equal measure. When he first met Pidge’s brother, Keith seriously thought they were twins by the way genetics had copied and pasted them more often than not.

“Katie loves my stories,” says Matt with a sniff. “She just gets embarrassed admitting it.”

Hearing someone use Pidge’s actual name was another thing Keith had to get used to on the fly.

“Maybe it’s because she has to hear them twice when you retell them to me,” says Keith as he sits down on a second stool.

“Part of the issue,” admits Pidge.

Matt scoffs. “You used to beg me to tell you the story about the moth incident all the time.”

“I was like, five,” snorts Pidge, “and I thought your voice was funny when you told it.”

“Incredible.” The stray hand reaching for a slice of orange is beaten off with a slap. “Cruel.”

Keith leans against the window frame, propping his elbow up on the dusty edge. The siblings bicker for awhile longer until they remember that Keith is still present. It’s only his second time visiting after Pidge insisted he drop by the Sunday after their frozen yogurt trip. It seems Keith wasn’t the only one to feel the shift.

“So up to anything interesting?” asks Matt mildly.

It takes a brief moment for Keith to realize Matt is referring to him. “Me? Nah. The usual.”

“ _Yawn_ ,” says Pidge.

“You’re no different,” scolds Matt, going for an orange slice again and failing.

Keith doesn’t tell them about his wandering the city in his free time—they would only worry, and Pidge would lay down some irrefutable logic that would make him second guess all his decisions. He can’t afford that. Not yet. It’s bad enough his relationship—his _friendship—_ with Lance is based off the other man’s knowledge of Keith’s prowling. Thus far, however, Lance hasn’t said a word about it to the others. Keith hopes he doesn’t spontaneously decide to blurt it out.

“The library is exciting enough,” says Keith instead.

Matt grimaces at him. “You don’t have to lie to me.”

“I’m not. Just the other day, I had to scrape shit off the walls in the public bathroom.”

From beside him, Pidge physically gags as Matt recoils.

“That’s—nah,” tries Matt.

Keith grins. “Yeah, that was thrilling enough for me.”

The third time he reaches, Matt successfully snipes an orange slice, much to Pidge’s dismay. She smacks his shoulder in retribution and turns in her seat to devour the rest of the fruit in relative peace.

“When are you due out?” asks Keith.

Pidge freezes but Matt tips his head as he replies, “Five more days. My prosthetic is due in tomorrow, too.”

“Already?” Keith whistles. “Shiro didn’t get his for a couple months.”

“Ah well, benefits of rich parents, right?” Matt’s grin is lopsided. One hand twitches towards the space where his leg should be resting.

Pidge hums, loud. “I can’t wait to see you relearn how to walk. Should I take bets?”

“No,” groans Matt. “Have some pity on your poor brother.”  
  
The humour is forced, but it doesn’t feel like it. It just seems to be how the siblings are coping, with wisecracks and grins and laughter— _anything_ to keep the mood from plummeting. Keith is sure he hasn’t seen the ugly moments. For once, he wishes he had someone there beside him when he first saw Shiro lying there. The crumpled paper in his pocket suddenly feels heavy. It’s while the siblings bicker about bedazzled limbs that Keith saves Allura’s number to his phone.

* * *

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> vomit tw?? i suppose?¿ skip between "Keith wakes up" and cont after "Eventually the sun is high"  
> all that sweet violence is fair game fam

Keith takes a shortcut through the park that evening. The weather is exceptionally nice, and this end of the park has far less ominously flickering lights than the other. It’s possible to feel safe here, and Keith takes full advantage of it. From the trickling sound there’s some sort of small waterfall nearby. A few fingers of sunlight still stretch across the sky, warming the trees and extending the shadows, providing just enough light that a few ducks still quack at each other.

It’s when the sky is lilac, the world a cool and hazy dusk, that Keith feels the first prickle of unease. At first he can’t pinpoint it, and no matter how many times he looks over his shoulder, there’s nothing there. Just the gurgle of water, the rustle of grass. Just the flicker of a moth’s shadow. Just the brisk walk of another human across the pond—

Too fast. Keith’s step falters. 

It’s a man clutching a satchel to his side, the opposite hand gripping the strap hard. His gaze is set forward, but even from the distance across the water, Keith can tell his jaw is set with fear. Suddenly the man breaks into a run. The prickle of unease turns into a cold hand against Keith’s neck. Another person is giving chase, flickering beneath the lamplight, arms pumping fast. 

Before he has time to consider his options, Keith is sprinting back the way he came to cross the nearest bridge. The two have a head start, but Keith is fast. 

Ahead, the man in the lead tries to shake his tail by veering into the trees. All he does is stumble and lose speed as the leaves give beneath his feet. The hunter makes a sound like a gleeful chortle, leaping and bounding over tree roots. Keith does his best to follow his lead, since it seems to be the most efficient. Neither realize they have a tagalong yet.

Then the hunter jumps, arms outstretched as if to embrace the air itself. Either hand meets an overhanging tree branch. The wood shatters at the points of contact, torn right off. Keith stumbles and struggles to right himself.

_ Tore it right off _ , says the Pidge from Keith’s memories.

_ Demon _ ! screams Keith’s brain.  _ Demon! Demon! Demon! _

The victim breaks free of the tree line and trips on the edge of the pavement. He goes down in a tangle of bag straps and panicked limbs. The demon leaps out in front of him. Keith’s heart is in his throat. 

“Help—” rasps the man on the ground, chin bleeding from the pavement and glasses askew. “Please—somebody—”

The demon snorts. “At least be a little louder,” he simpers, and reaches towards the other man with hands still covered in wood chips. 

Keith collides with the demon. His momentum throws them both into the iron railing bordering the path. The demon curses, and Keith feels fingers grasp his forearm and squeeze. He doesn’t wait to soak up the confusion—the fear—in the demon’s expression, because his fist slams into it. The collision jars his sore elbow, but it doesn’t diminish any of the force. Before he can get in another punch, the demon shoves Keith away and scrambles to his feet. He makes it several steps, when the victim, now on his knees, slaps the ground with both palms.

In an instant, the pavement turns to sand. The demon’s feet sink and he falters. Keith dives onto him, forearm hooking around his neck. A hand shoves itself desperately into Keith’s face, nails digging for purchase or for pain, until they find hair and yank. Keith’s head snaps forward at the sudden pull. In a surge of motion, the demon throws himself to the side, dragging Keith beneath him. 

Sand fills Keith’s face. The demon gasps out something. The man cries out a warning, but all Keith can feel is cloth shifting beneath his hands and the weight of the demon as he digs his knee into Keith’s belly. Something hard clocks Keith in the side of the head. Cold pain erupts from the point of contact. Keith relinquishes his grip to throw his hands up, just in time to block another blow. He shakes his head to desperately rid himself of the sand. When he blinks open his eyes, they sting something fierce, but he can see the demon now thrusting himself away, abandoning a chunk of rock edged red.

Keith rises to his feet, sand cascading off his body, skull throbbing but a hot fury in his veins. Something wet drips into his eyes. He doesn’t think anything of it. 

Ahead of him, the demon has found solid ground. His breath is coming out fast. He’s scared.

_ Good, _ thinks Keith grimly. 

The demon doesn’t make it very far when Keith grabs him and throws him to the ground. He keeps a firm grip on the demon’s wrist, beginning to twist it to fold his arm into a pin, but the demon thrashes. His shoulder pops. Keith’s grip slackens for a split second in shock, and the demon is free. 

He staggers to his feet once more, evading Keith’s outstretched fingers. One foot slips in the sand spread out over the walkway. Keith barely manages to snatch the edge of a sleeve—and then the demon is falling. The demon’s body spins on the point of attachment that is Keith’s grip. Gazes meet, one stretched wide and afraid, the other blinking in confusion. The cloth slides out between Keith’s fingers. 

The demon falls on the railing. His body slumps, his eyes blank, head propped up by an iron fleur de lis. 

“No,” croaks Keith.

“Thank god,” rasps the man still kneeling on the ground. He falls onto his backside and begins to shudder as he sobs. “Thank you. Thank you.”

Keith says nothing.

He stares at the demon, and the dead stares back. 

* * *

Everything is flying, yet the floor remains solid beneath a cowering Keith. Something frighteningly solid shoots past his ear. He curls in tighter around himself, arms covering his head.

This is too much, too much,  _ too much _ —

The world is honey; the air is thick and unbreathable, objects slowing in midair. Keith begins to lower his arms, but they’re heavy and lethargic. 

“Stay down.”

Keith stays down. Shiro always knew what was best in any given situation. If he said to stay down, then he would stay down.

The desks and chairs and books spinning through the honeyed air pause when Shiro outstretches his hands. He’s standing in front of Keith, protecting him. Keith’s arms ache to cling like a child to his legs. Everything begins shooting back in the trajectory they’d come. 

_ Safe _ , Keith thinks, or says, or maybe both by the way Shiro looks down to smile at him.

Then the world erupts, and no matter how much Shiro deflects, there’s always something more. There are people in the doorway watching Shiro fight to protect his family. Keith sees the bandaged arm and bloodshot eye as if it has been shoved against his face.

“Leave,” snarls Shiro.

“A useful power,” says the demon. “Haxus, I want it. Go.”

“ _ Leave!” _ bellows Shiro again, tendons tense against skin. 

“Of course, sir,” says another demon, and he steps forward. Tall, sharp-featured, eyes glinting, gleaming, glowing—

And Shiro—Keith’s hero, his brother, his only family—falls.

The honey leaves with the demons. Shiro doesn’t get up.

* * *

Keith wakes up on his couch early the next morning with the last vestiges of a headache pulsing behind his eyelids. His arm hangs off the cushions, and his hand lays in a puddle of his own sick. When he realizes this, Keith’s stomach heaves again, and he scrambles off the bed to hunch over the toilet. Nothing comes up, but he stays poised over the bowl for another ten minutes just in case.

The entire time he rinses his mouth and cleans his hands, he doesn’t once look at his reflection.

There’s a sour darkness at the edge of his thoughts, reaching for his attention, and Keith throws himself into vigorous chores to distract it. First he phones Coran, awake before the sun, to call in sick. Coran doesn’t push, but wishes him well before hanging up. Next, Keith cleans up the mess on the floor until the apartment smells strongly of vinegar, and then sets to work scouring the rest of the floor. He never realized how dusty the floorboards got. The bathroom is next.

Keith cleans and cleans until his skin is raw and his elbow is aching and there’s bruises on the pads of his fingertips, and then keeps going.

Because if he stops, if he lets the memories take precedence—

_ Thank you,  _ says the spectacled man.

Yet all Keith sees is blank eyes.

He hasn’t eaten yet, but that doesn’t stop his stomach from heaving. This time clear bile coats the freshly cleaned toilet bowl. Keith finds time to mourn and picks up the spray cleaner once more. 

Eventually the sun is high in the sky and he hasn’t left the apartment, but it’s clean in a way that no longer smells like home. It’s unsettling, not at all satisfying like Keith was hoping, and his fingers continue to vibrate for something else to do. Anything else.

He pulls out his knives and starts polishing. Every surface is already gleaming, but he buffs it more. The edges are already sharp, but he makes them finer. At one point, his grip slips and the blade skims over his fingertip. For a moment Keith thinks it missed, but then a bead of red grows and grows until it dribbles over. 

Absentmindedly, he lifts his uninjured hand to brush his hairline. Flakes of dried blood come free. There’s a scab there. He doesn’t remember seeing it—and then Keith reminds himself that he hasn’t looked himself in the mirror yet. 

He doesn’t think he could stand meeting the gaze of a murderer.

_ No _ , croaks his own voice inside his head.

_ Thank god _ , says the victim.

_ Tore it right off _ , says Pidge.

Keith grips the handle of his knife until his knuckles strain against skin, fingertip forgotten. A blank gaze stares at him inside his head. His lip curls as Keith tries to force anger—always soothing, that righteous fury—against the image, but it isn’t working. Instead, he’s sick at himself, at the fact it’s  _ his _ fault there’s a lifeless body in the park. His fault. Keith’s. 

_ Thank you _ , the victim had repeated, even when Keith said nothing.  _ Thank you _ , said the victim, tears in his eyes and a desperately relieved pull to his mouth and the grip in his hands as he shook Keith’s. 

That’s right. The man—the  _ demon _ —was a sick freak. He ripped Matt’s leg off, and would have had another victim if Keith hadn’t stepped in. It’s because of Keith that there’s a man with a story to tell and not a funeral. It’s because of Keith—it’s  _ thanks _ to Keith. He saved a life.

_ You took one too _ , reminds his traitorous conscience.

_ A demon,  _ retorts another facet of himself.  _ A monster who would have tortured that man and many others.  _

Besides, wasn’t it an accident? Yes, that’s  _ right _ . Keith didn’t do it on purpose. The demon lost his balance, it wasn’t Keith’s fault. He tried to grab him! If only the demon hadn’t tried to fight in the first place, he would be in jail, not on a cold slab in a basement, strangers poking and prodding with cool steel. 

He removed a threat.

Life continues on.

By late afternoon, Keith finds his appetite.

* * *

Keith is inexplicably drawn to the park at night, as if it’s luring him in with sweet whispers. The darkness is deep, but he doesn’t fear it. The evils are no mysteries. As he walks, he waits for that crawling sensation up his spine. His mouth is dry at the thought of facing another demon so soon after the accident, but…

_ It’s necessary, _ Keith reminds himself for the fifth time since stepping out of his apartment. 

He doesn’t think about why it has to be him scouring the darkness. Despite convincing himself that all is well, Keith doesn’t return to the sandy pit and the iron rail. His mind drifts back to the man he saved thanking him over and over, and then Keith leaving, running back to his apartment, the man not stopping his retreat. He worries about the police, about being intercepted on his way home, but nothing happens. Not yet. 

Instead Keith finds himself on a well-travelled path under flickering lights, the bulbs buzzing within their hazy confines, to a low bridge. He’s almost not surprised to see a familiar figure perched on the stone and kicking his legs.

“Bit late,” says Keith.

As he joins him on the bridge, Lance’s gaze flits up to his hairline, then away. “A bit,” he agrees.

The city lights are bright and reflecting off the water, the same scene as when they first met. Keith remembers being wary. Now he feels secure, as though his seat on the stone has somehow widened. His legs begin to kick at the same pace as Lance’s.

“Can’t sleep?” asks Keith.

“I guess,” says Lance. Keith waits until he adds, “I feel out of place there.”

“Back with Hunk?”

“Yeah.” Shoulders hunch slightly forward. “Everything’s the same. Smells the same. Still too hot at night. I can hear the neighbours arguing.”

Keith waits, but this time Lance doesn’t continue until Keith prompts, “But?”

Lance shrugs, leans back on his hands and forces a laugh. “I feel out of place,” he says again. 

There are shadows under his eyes, Keith notices, darker than he remembers. Maybe it’s the time of night, or maybe he hasn’t slept well recently. Lance reaches up to run his fingers through his hair once, twice, and then stills his hand, tangled in his short locks. 

“I’ve been dreaming,” he begins slowly, gaze fixed on the water, ”about bad things.”

Keith thinks he might understand. “Things that happened?”

There’s a pause, and then Lance lowers his hand, frowning. “Things that might.”

“Hunk trusts you,” says Keith for what feels like the umpteenth time. It must be etched into his tongue by now, a permanent addition to his breath. 

It falls on cynical ears. “That’s the problem,” says Lance. 

Keith opens his mouth to say something else just as repetitive and unhelpful, but Lance beats him to the punch.

“It’s—whatever,” he says with a dismissive wave of his hand, a loose pebble falling off his palm and into the water with a  _ plink _ . “They’re just dreams. Enough about me—old news right? Why are you here?”

He turns his head to look at Keith, who finds himself averting his gaze too quickly. It’s odd, out of place, but he feels  _ guilty _ . 

The feeling only worsens when he says, “Late night walks are my thing.”

Ridiculous. He has no reason to feel bad. It’s not as though he’s actively lying to Lance. It’s true—although his walks would be better called patrols, maybe even hunts, but he  _ does _ walk. 

“That so?” The response has no particular inflection to it. Lance probably thinks Keith is dull. “No wonder you take your coffee so strong.”

There’s an uncomfortable itch in his gut, but Keith ignores it. “I don’t take it any stronger than the rest.”

“Dude, are you serious?” Lance snorts a laugh. “Hunk told me they make a cup the equivalent of three espressos on purpose, ‘cause of you and Pidge.”

“What.”

“Yeah, man. Didn’t you ever wonder why your soul was leaving your corporal form?”

Keith blinks, brow furrowing. “So, when I drink...multiple cups…”

“You’re totally gonna die,” drawls Lance. “Rest in coffee, Keith.”

Then he laughs, looking away from Keith’s conflicted expression, shoulders shaking and a hand slapping against the stone in his mirth. It’s a good sound—no, it’s wonderful. It seems to ease the ring of shadows around Lance’s eyes and the pinch of his lips. The itch in Keith’s gut worsens. 

The moment Lance calms down, he looks at Keith with such a fond expression that he feels laid bare and vulnerable. That isn’t an expression one usually would use for him. At least, no one besides Shiro.

Keith finds himself basking in it desperately. 

“Kind of glad I met you, Keith,” says Lance with a wry twist of his mouth. “Also kind of—what’s the word—stupefied? Yeah, that.” Keith splutters in protest and Lance claps a hand on his shoulder. “It’s a compliment, alright? Take it.”

“I...guess, okay,” says Keith haltingly, voice quivering oddly at the end when Lance squeezes his shoulder.

“Good, good.” He hesitates, and then his hand slides off Keith’s shoulder. “Uh—” Lance stops to clear his throat. “Um. Tomorrow. When you’re done work, we were thinking of having a picnic. Here. In the park. Coran is taking Hunk’s shift, so we can hang out a bit.”

Keith can’t remember the last time he came to the park in the broad daylight. Maybe that’s what makes him agree so quickly, embarrassed by his own eagerness but also oddly elated by Lance’s laugh.

When they part ways to attempt sleep once more, Keith forgets his guilt in favour of recalling the cadence of Lance’s mirth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao :3c the ripper has a thing for guys w glasses i guess  
> also im muckin off to the west coast to do some ~*things*~ so i'll probably forget to update consistently sry my sweets


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sup my guys i didn't realize how busy i'd be when i got to BC but. alas. ANYWAY i put two parts together because i didn't realize they were rly short...

When Keith arrives at the library the next day and accepts a mug of coffee from Pidge, he asks her what the caffeine content is like. She simply looks at him and laughs dryly, and that’s all the answer Keith requires.

She leaves first, so it’s just Keith and some instructors doing children’s programs in the activity room. It might be the caffeine, but Keith’s knee won’t stop jumping into the underside of the desk, and his gaze keeps flitting to the clock as if it’ll move faster. It takes him an hour of denial until he relents in the safety of his own head that he _might_ be excited for the picnic. When he thinks about it, he sees Lance’s face immediately and his stomach does a weird flip. That can’t be good. Keith’s already decided his friendship with Lance is worrisome given his… alternative hobbies. If it’s developing into anything more than that, well—

“Whatcha thinkin’ about?” drawls Lance, chin propped on folded arms.

Keith’s knee hits the desk again. He sucks in a sharp breath and pretends it hurts more than it does just so he doesn’t have to think too hard about how his stomach is performing Olympic level vault routines. Lance laughs loud and leans up and over the countertop until his balance is threatening to topple him into Keith’s space.

“Ready for the best picnic of your life?”

Keith grimaces at him—or rather, at his knee as he rubs it. “I don’t really remember going on many picnics, so the comparison is unfair.”

“Then we’ll just go on a bunch of super mundane ones until you agree,” sniffs Lance dismissively.

There’s a gold medalist in Keith’s intestines. “Weren’t you guys going to meet me by the park?”

“Nah, I thought I’d come fetch you,” says Lance as he leans back. “Pidge and Hunk’ll meet us there.”

“Ah.”

“And Coran usually comes in early, right? So we can weasel you out of the last half hour of your shift.”

Lance’s smile is blinding. Keith is forced to squint. He pretends it’s out of doubt.

“That’s probably why Coran isn’t rehiring you,” quips Keith.

“Holy shit, _rude_ ,” gasps Lance. “That’s probably on the _bottom_ of the list, first of all.”

“There’s a list?” Keith smothers a laugh against his hand.

Lance wrinkles his nose at him. “It’s long, I’ll admit. I was a problem employee and now I’m creating troublemakers out of the rest of you. All part of my evil plan.”

“To what? Create the worst team of librarians in the city?”

“In the _world_.”

“You’re the worst, you know that?”

“The best,” corrects Lance in a sing-song voice. “Oh hell yeah, Coran’s here. See? Told you.”

“I never said he wouldn’t,” snorts Keith, but Lance is already approaching Coran with his arms spread wide.

* * *

 

Somehow, Coran heartily agrees to letting Keith loose early. Despite this, Lance acts as though they’re going to be especially late, ushering Keith along with flapping hands down the street. He only stops when Keith starts speedwalking.

By the time they reach one of the arched entrances to the park, they’re both gulping for air from racing. Keith just barely slaps his hand on the wrought iron first, declaring victory between gasping breaths.

“Please, no more medical emergencies while I’m around,” sighs a familiar voice.

Keith and Lance straighten as one, causing Shay to giggle. There’s a legitimate wicker basket hanging off one of her arms, the other amicably looped through Hunk’s. Pidge pokes her head out from behind them.

“Finally!” she says in way of greeting.

“I texted you that we’d be early!” squawks Lance indignantly. To Shay, his demeanor instantly becomes more sheepish. “Hi Shay.”

“Hi Lance,” greets Shay, amused. Her gaze slides to Keith, eyes crinkling. “And I remember you. How’s your arm?”

Both Hunk and Pidge shoot her curious looks. Keith feels his face heat up.

“Great,” he says immediately. “Just great.” In an effort to waive the dangerous curiosity of Hunk and Pidge combined, he adds, “I, uh, dislocated my elbow falling down some stairs.”

“I happened to find him,” says Lance quickly, “which is part of the story of how we, er…”

“Became… friends,” finishes Keith haltingly.

“Yeah, that.”

Hunk and Pidge look equally unimpressed; they turn their heads in unison to look at Shay. Meanwhile, Shay is blinking at both young men slowly. For a moment, Keith expects her to innocently blow their cover, but instead she lets out a tinkling laugh.

“Instead of going to a proper clinic, of course they show up at _my_ door.” She shakes her head, with a long-suffering sigh. “This is what I get for being the capable friend.”

“Hey,” protests Hunk with a sniff, “I provide some amazing meals that you fools would only dream of otherwise.”

“I’m the tech support friend!” adds Pidge.

“All you do is open the settings,” points out Lance.

“So then why do you guys keep asking for my help?”

Lance responds with unintelligible grumbling. Pidge looks proud of herself, folding her arms over her chest. With the dangerous topic of how they met out of the way, Keith allows himself to sink back into the ebb and flow of their banter.

They find a space within the shade cast by an ash tree to set up their picnic. Several blankets are overlapped to form a large enough surface for the five of them to sit down. Rather excitedly, Hunk begins opening up tupperwares of food and describing what ingredients he’d chosen for the egg salad and cucumber sandwiches, the homemade dressing for the Greek salad, and the peaches and cream pie. Even the iced tea receives its own introduction.

“Sounds great, Hunk,” says Pidge. “Really great, honest. But, uh, can we _eat it?”_

Hunk blinks and frowns. “How can you say you’re actually enjoying it if you don’t know how it was made or—?”

“Easily!” chirps Pidge, swooping in to grab a triangular sandwich. Half of it goes into her mouth. “Shu-er eashi-y.”

“Just eat, you heathen,” says Hunk with a grimace at Pidge’s poor table manners. “That goes for the rest of you, too.”

“Thank you, Hunk,” says Shay earnestly before tidily digging in.

“Have you eaten Hunk’s cooking before?” asks Lance as Keith reaches for salad. He can’t say he’s actually tried Greek salad before.

“Just the baked stuff,” replies Keith. Is that an olive? He’s seriously concerned now.

“Well, you’re in for a treat.” Lance’s plate is already stacked high, the salad topped with an unnecessary number of sandwiches.

“I’ll take your word for it.” _Please be an olive. Please be an olive. Please_ —oh, okay, cool, actually an olive.

Hunk is looking at them all—but especially Keith—with barely disguised expectation. Eventually he foregoes all attempts at hiding and leans forward.

“So how is it?” he asks.

A startled Shay, mouth full, chews rapidly to clear the way in order to say, “G-good! Really excellent, Hunk.”

“Refreshing,” sighs Lance contentedly.

Pidge doesn’t bother swallowing. Her response is garbled, but apparently positive. Keith leans back to avoid the spray of moist crumbs, and shoots Hunk an earnest look.

“I have no idea what’s in this,” he says, “but I like it.”

Hunk absorbs the praise and releases the energy in the form of a beaming smile. “Good! The food has to match the weather. The forecast was looking a bit iffy there for awhile—“

“Aw, does that mean you would’ve made chicken noodle soup instead?” Lance looks utterly heartbroken.

One look at Lance’s face, and Hunk immediately caves. “I can make it for dinner.”

“ _Score.”_

This apparently opens up Lance’s appetite to a whole new level, and Keith finds himself trying to keep up. Shay goes at her own pace, and Pidge petulantly takes the first bite out of every dish while Hunk watches his feast get demolished.

“You know, the park isn’t that bad,” says Hunk as Lance pins Keith’s fork down in order to swipe more feta onto his plate.

Pidge cocks an eyebrow at that. “Was there any doubt?”

A dog barks and a group of college-age adults squeal as they swarm around it for pets. Pidge lifts up her hand as if displaying the scene on her palm. Hunk, waiting for the salad to free up, snorts.

“I mean lately,” he says with a wave of his fork, “it’s been… rough.”

“Rough?” prompts Shay.

“With the—“ He stops and purses his lips with a frown, mouth working around his thoughts. “I get a bit nervous walking through the park, you know? There’s so many areas where there isn’t a lot of people and…”

When Hunk hesitates, Keith looks up from his food to shoot a quick glance at Lance, only to meet his eyes. The other man’s mouth twitches. Simultaneously, they turn back to their food.

“…Well,” continues Hunk, putting his plate down, “that death the other day—the attacks in general? Even though they’ve been happening at night, I still get a little nervous during the day.”

At that, Keith finds his eyes flicking to Pidge. Unlike Lance, she doesn’t share the glance and continues to shove her mouth full of food. Keith quickly occupies himself with the last of the sandwiches.

“That _is_ nerve wracking,” agrees Shay. “This is the city after all, there are so many different kinds of people. Not to mention with the addition of powers to the mix.”

“Yeah, you never know…” Hunk trails off. This time, Keith doesn’t have to look up to see which gazes may be meeting.

The atmosphere seems to tense, or at least Keith thinks it is. Pidge doesn’t appear bothered, and Shay is still delicately scooping up food, but Lance’s hand cuts into Keith’s line of sight to grab for the pie. There’s still food on his plate.

The pause in conversation goes from a normal gap to a yawning chasm in the five seconds of silence that stretches between the five of them. The very air is starting to thicken in Keith’s lungs—and then a bright blue disc flies out of nowhere to collide with the pie in an explosion of cream and peaches.

“What the fuck!” yowls Lance as he topples backwards.

Keith is halfway into a lunge position, arm outstretched towards the pie as if to save it or something. His hand and arm is flecked with it. A frisbee slowly tips over the edge of the pie dish, scooping the dessert with it. Shay sighs, deeply. Pidge does as well, but it sounds far more foreboding.

“My pie,” whispers Hunk.

“The _pie_ ,” says Lance far louder.

He leaps to his feet. A group of kids are shouting half-baked apologies, a couple of them asking him to toss it back. Visibly fuming, Lance snatches up the frisbee and a dollop of cream cheese lands directly on Keith’s shoe.

“What the feta cheese is your problem?!” shouts Lance as he shakes the disc in the air. “Hoodlums! Miscreants! Hooligans!”

The children crow at his language. With an unnecessarily dramatic windup, Lance whips the frisbee. It goes soaring over the kids’ heads, prompting them to all give chase like a pack of puppies. When he turns back around to face the group, Pidge has five blades of grass sticking up from her hand.

“Time to draw straws,” she says simply.

* * *

“Well that backfired spectacularly,” notes Pidge as she and Keith walk towards the ice cream seller. “Although I’m split fifty fifty on whether Lance saw the reflection in my glasses.”

“I doubt it,” says Keith, although he does wonder why Lance was squinting at her so much when he drew his blade of grass.

“I’m starting to think you’re biased.”

“ _What?”_ Keith scoffs—loudly. “No way.”

“Mmkay.” But Keith still sees the way her mouth curves. “So Matt got his prosthetic. He’s been trying it out.”

At the swift change in topic, Keith isn’t able to convince Pidge that _no_ , he _definitely_ isn’t biased towards Lance in any positive way and that’s just _ridiculous_. Instead, he follows her conversation with his hands shoved into his pockets.

“Yeah?” he says. “That’s great. How’s he getting along with it?”

“Faster than expected,” agrees Pidge. “Matt won’t stop trying to kick me with it, so he just ends up tripping.” She snorts a laugh, and Keith’s feels a bubble of mirth in the pit of his stomach—giddy, but not enough to laugh. “Did you hear, though?” she continues. “The killing in the park Hunk mentioned. The demon that died is the same one that attacked Matt.”

The bubbles turn acidic. Keith feels nauseous. He realizes he’s late to respond when Pidge glances at him, and he desperately tries to come up with some combination of words that she can reply to, that’ll let Keith take another moment to think—to fix his expression and the sudden sensation that he’s going to be sick.

Pidge saves him from having to respond. “I feel the same.” Keith jolts, and she continues, “I’m glad he’s dead but—but guilty. For wishing death upon anyone. That doesn’t really seem like something anyone should want, but…”

Her eyebrows twitch up and she grins wryly. Keith says nothing, but this time he knows she doesn’t expect a response. There’s definitely still something churning in his gut, but he can’t tell whether it’s guilt or something else.

“Nice forehead, by the way,” quips Pidge. When Keith’s hand goes to the spots scabbing at his hairline, she laughs. “Come on! We’ve got ice cream to buy.”

The assortment of cones and popsicles and ice cream bars takes both of them to carry, and as awkward as it is to hold them all without something melting, they return to the others with no missteps. They’re no longer polishing off Hunk’s food—it’s all done for anyhow—but instead standing at an activity board by the sidewalk.

“This,” declares Lance as Pidge and Keith approach, “is a thing we _have_ to do.”

“It looks fun,” agrees Shay.

“Does it cost money?” asks Pidge as frozen treats are handed out.

Lance accepts an ice cream bar with a hungry gaze. Keith follows their shared line of sight to the bold poster posted front and center on the board. It’s advertising some sort of festival, but the graphics make it unclear exactly what it is they’re celebrating.

“What’s it for?” he asks, interrupting Lance’s excited chatter.

“The founding of the city,” says Lance as if it’s obvious by the vague clip-art. “Look. _Celebrating Altea with food and music_. It’s right there.”

“Ah. How old is Altea?”  
  
One by one they exchange glances with each other. Nobody seems to know the answer to that.

“...So we’re going, right?” Lance’s eyes are bright, flicking between them all excitedly. When his gaze fixates on Keith, it takes him a moment before Keith remembers that he’s a part of them now.

So he allows himself to smile, say “It sounds fun”, and bask in Lance’s enthusiasm while the discomfort festering in the pit of his stomach fizzles out.

* * *

“New favourite,” declares Lance as he leans against the desk, framing a book with his hands. “A human and android fall in love. This time it’s _heterosexual._ Riveting.”

Keith glances at the cover. “That one’s been on hold like three times this last month.”

“I don’t doubt it. Listen to this: _Love is more than mere flesh and blood_. That’s almost scary, actually. Look at his _eye_ —”

The book floats between Keith’s face and the computer screen he’s trying to focus on. Mouth twitching, Keith bats it away.

“Sit down and read it,” he says, tapping loudly on the keyboard.

“I’m _gonna_ ,” sniffs Lance. “I just wanted to bother you first about it.”

“So you’re aware that’s what you’re doing.”

“Of course.”

“If you’re going to hang out around here so much,” snorts Keith, “why not just actually beg Coran for your job back? We’re all just joking about the ban.””

Lance pauses, then slowly withdraws. When he doesn’t immediately retort, Keith looks up from the screen. Lance’s shoulders are hunching slightly, in that uncertain way of his that Keith doesn’t like.

“Lance,” says Keith, voice tickling oddly in his throat.

“Uh, sorry,” says Lance haltingly. “I think I’m going to look somewhere else?”

Keith raises his eyebrows. “Is that a question?”

“No, I—I’m going to.” With a grimace, Lance adds, “Hunk’s been covering for me for too long.”

“You’ve stopped working with Rolo?”

“He doesn’t—I don’t work enough,” says Lance. “Otherwise, y’know, I wouldn’t _be here_ all the time.”

 _Not that I mind_ , Keith thinks, lips firmly pursed to prevent the thought from escaping.

However, Lance sees his thin lipped expression and laughs sheepishly. “I guess I’m being annoying, huh.”

“No!” blurts out Keith. His face burns; Lance is looking at him with wide eyes, startled by the outburst. “You’re… not annoying.”

Lance blinks. Slowly, a smile spreads across his face. He leans back over the counter, the book tucked under his chin. “So you don’t mind if I just read this entire book to you right now?”

“Just put it away,” sighs Keith, trying not to sound too fond.

With a laugh, Lance obliges and disappears back among the bookshelves. Keith turns his attention to the computer screen, but his mind is too busy analyzing Lance’s smile and the hop in his step. Somehow he doesn’t groan aloud at himself when he pushes back from the desk and tries instead to catalogue the new items that just came in.

When he rises to his feet, something in his periphery catches his attention—a woman, standing in the entrance to the library. She’s wearing loose clothes, her sweatpants rolled up to expose leanly muscled calves. A cold sweat breaks out across Keith’s skin; his breath scrapes past his throat.

She looks at him, nostrils flaring, and smiles.

By the time Keith reaches the entryway, the demon is already across the street and darting around a corner. Without thinking, he gives chase. Cars honk at him as he weaves through traffic. People snap at him as he shoves by. He can still see her halfway down the block, and he runs, and runs, and runs.

At the next corner, he’s lost her. There’s too many alleys and businesses to duck into, too many taxis and buses and subway entrances. Keith is finding the air hard to suck in, and it’s got nothing to do with the spew of car exhaust and cigarette smoke.

 _Calm down_ , he reminds himself as people shoulder past him standing desolate in the middle of the sidewalk. _Calm down_.

The city is too big. Keith feels the panic encroaching on him. His breath is coming faster, in shorter gasps, as he whirls around, looking wildly for the flap of a loose shirt or the cut of a sharp gaze.

Hope comes in the reflection off a railcar’s back window.

In an instant Keith is running again, legs pumping as fast as his heart. When he crosses the road and skids to a stop by the receiving area of a hotel, he just sees her whip out of sight. Caution tempers some of the fear still thrumming as restless in his veins as the adrenaline. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do when he catches her—pin her down? Call the police? He could probably make up a story, he doesn’t doubt she has a record of some sort.

Deep breath in, out. Licking dry lips, Keith prowls down the driveway. There’s a small transport truck parked there, backed up against a shuttered loading dock, leaving little room for much else but a dumpster. Keith turns on the spot—nobody. He frowns. The only other way in or out is a thin gap between the hotel and the next building over, but the alley is barred off. Keith moves deeper into the lot, turning slowly as he does so.

It’s thanks to his reflexes that he blocks the first blow. The demon comes sliding over the hood of the truck, leg flying out to strike at Keith’s head. The sound of bending metal alerts him, and then he’s taking the kick against ready arms. She’s quick to settle on her feet, switching into a flurry of punches that seem to know exactly where to hit to get Keith, forced to block more than divert, drawing in a hissed breath.

He deflects one fist, fingers curling around a sharp wrist, and pivots on his foot. The woman goes flying when Keith yanks her over his hip. She lands flat on her back, coughing out the air in her lungs. Feet planted, she’s already lunging up, but Keith keeps his grip and pulls her back until she loses her footing. Before she can slither her way out of his hold, Keith jams his other hand against her elbow and swivels her arm around until it’s locked and her cheek is pressed to the pavement.

With a knee pressed down between her shoulderblades, Keith takes a moment to catch his breath. The demon struggles to do the same, but with Keith’s weight bearing down on her doubled with her locked arm pointed straight towards the sky, she isn’t having a very good time of it. Keith can’t find it in himself to be sympathetic.

When his breathing calms down enough that he isn’t gasping, Keith considers the situation. It’s almost exactly like the first time they fought—but at least this time nobody can sneak up on him with a baseball bat. Keith moves the demon’s arm to put the slightest bit of pressure on her shoulder. He doesn’t think he could sit there and dislocate it, but the threat is enough.

“Were you looking for me?” he asks.

She says nothing. Her free hand moves. A flash of metal and the smack of skin, and Keith’s staring down at where he’s stopped her from sinking a switchblade into his thigh. His head buzzes from the danger of it—of the sharp point scant inches from nicking his femoral artery. Fingers tighten around the demon’s. Using his other knee to keep her shoulder under pressure, Keith pries the woman’s fingers from the knife. A quick check reveals no other blades on her person, leaving her free arm useless but for pinching, if she so desired.

The demon does nothing more—she just looks at the far wall, seemingly bored. Keith presses into her arm until her expression twitches. Good, he’s got her attention that way at least.

“I’ll ask again,” says Keith, gaze flicking around to make sure nobody’s about to walk in on them. “Were you looking for me?”

She responds with a sigh too exaggerated to be real. Keith leans into her arm a little more. The blood drains from her face.

“What—difference—does it make?” the demon grits out.

“Just answer me,” snaps Keith.

She stares hard at the wall. Keith’s patience wears thin. The thrill of the fight is leaving him high strung and nervous. If she won’t speak like this, then…

He pushes until her shoulder distorts and she cries out. Sweat beads on her forehead and her fingers dig uselessly against the pavement. Keith holds her there as long as he dares, feeling the demon shudder in pain beneath his knee.

“I was!” she finally gasps. Keith doesn’t move. “I looked! My memory—was fuzzy.”

At last, Keith alleviates some of the pressure. “What do you remember?”

She almost snarls at him, “Smells, then nothing but fighting someone.”

“Good,” says Keith.

“Is it?”

Keith blinks down at her wordlessly. She dares to smile.

“You’re alone,” she says. When he doesn’t say anything, she strains her neck to look at him out of the corner of her eye. “My power stopped working when I hit you. The memory wipe was someone else.”

 _Shit_. Keith subtly tries to grab his phone from his back pocket, careful not to stick the knife into himself or the demon. A finger brushes his empty pocket. Keith stiffens. His phone—of course he would have left it in the library. The demon looks like she wants to laugh but can’t.

Fine, he can’t call Lance here, that doesn’t matter. The hotel entrance is around the corner, it’s just a matter of keeping both the demon’s arms up and behind her back, then Keith can call the police.

Then what? What can he say? He chased her down the street because why? There’s not really a crime he can pin on her. Maybe assault, but the chances of that leading to anything but wasted time are slim. Even using the excuse that she probably has a criminal record isn’t doing anything to assuage Keith’s mounting unease.

The demon is staring at him, eyes rolled so far to the side it must be uncomfortable. Keith is beginning to get the sense that he’s missing something here.

His hands tighten—one on the demon’s arm, the other her knife. “Why,” he asks, “did you come looking for me?”

She fights back a smile. Keith sees it in the way her lips purse and twitch, trying not to curl. “My memory was fuzzy,” she says again.

“But why did you bother _looking?”_

“Information is precious.”

Keith’s heart, barely calm, begins to pick up speed. “What information?”

“Powers are a commodity.” Her lip really does curl then, but it isn’t a smile. “Nullification abilities have buyers.”

_Danger, danger, danger—_

“You said your memory was fuzzy,” says Keith almost desperately, “so how could you know about my power—?”

His own memory provides the answer: a large man with large fists, lying on the ground before Lance even made it. He wasn’t affected by the persuasion. He _knows_ about Keith—his power, his face.

The demon shudders slightly beneath Keith’s knee—a laugh. “I don’t need to smell you to know you’re afraid,” she hisses gleefully. “You have no plan, no way out. Even if the police come, what then? Will they believe what you say? _They_ certainly won’t need to smell the lie on you.”

Keith’s grip on her arm is clammy.

“What a pity,” she continues, “that you can’t hide anymore. What a nice library. Would be a shame if something happened to it, yes?”

Sludge clings to his limbs, heavy.

“And if the one with the memory power happens to be around—”

“What do you want?” Keith rasps out.

“Just give us your power,” she says simply.

“ _How?”_

“Haxus will gladly take it—”

_Shiro standing, sweeping his hand and deflecting a maelstrom of debris._

_“Haxus, I want it.”_

Keith realizes he can’t let her go. The police will come, question her, maybe throw her in jail and inevitably she’ll be bailed out. This time she’ll remember him; where he works, how he fights, the people around him. Did she see Lance? Does she know they’re friends? The only thing she doesn’t know is that Lance is the one that manipulated her thoughts and desires.

His grip tightens on the knife.

It needs to stay that way.

The woman strains her neck further to look at him better. “Well? It’s a simple trade.”

Keith’s hands are too sweaty; his heart flutters like a rabbit’s, barely pumping blood anymore; icy fingers grip his gut. The woman is still—no, no the _demon_. The _demon_ isn’t fighting, pinned as she is, thinking she’s striking a deal: the safety of those Keith cares about in exchange for his power. He knows it will never end there. Not with Haxus. Not with the demon he works for.

Keith thinks of the library, and of his Saturdays with Pidge and Hunk, Coran pushing coffee across the desktop. He thinks of laughing about absurd books, and the eccentricities of college students. He thinks of frozen yogurt, the picnic, a bridge at night.

The knife’s handle feels as though it may slip right out of his hand. Keith swallows hard. The demon is trying to look at him, neck straining, eyes straining. Keith thinks of Lance, dark-eyed at the entrance to a back street, appearing between bookshelves, grinning across the counter, and he thinks of Shiro, lying prone in a hospital bed.

“Having second thoughts, boy?” says the demon. Her eyes meet Keith’s. She seems to notice the change. The slight curve of her mouth vanishes. “Don’t make a mistake.”

“I’m not,” says Keith, his voice hoarse, and he angles the blade towards her.

His first mistake is bothering to adjust his weight. The moment some of his weight alleviates, the demon bucks and twists. Her shoulder rotates oddly in its socket and Keith’s clammy grip slides against her skin as she rolls.

His second mistake is releasing the knife. The pavement meets his elbow, jarring the recent injury, and the blade flies from his grip to clatter on the ground. The demon scoops it up in an instant. Keith, trying to scramble to his feet, is forced to throw himself backwards at the first swipe of the knife at his throat.

Instead of pursuing him, the demon spins on her heel and runs, injured arm hanging at her side. Keith surges upright, feet sliding on loose concrete. She’s already on the sidewalk—if she gets away—

Panic is sour ice in Keith’s mouth. His lungs are full of cotton. Even while his legs keep moving, his body pitching forward in a sprint, Keith’s mind supplies him with endless images of Shiro in his hospital bed, Lance on a metal slab, the library on fire and his friends choking on smoke.

The demon darts out into the street; her gaze drifts over her shoulder. Their eyes meet. Her lip begins to twist, but Keith can’t tell if it’ll be a smile, because a second later the demon stumbles. A car’s horn blares, tires screech, and amongst the startled screams of bystanders and the acrid stench of burnt rubber, a woman lies motionless on the road. A taxi driver staggers out of his car, looking from the marionette on the pavement to the red spiderweb of cracks on his windshield.

People start forming a crowd. Nobody gives Keith, frozen on the sidewalk, a second glance. When he hears the sirens, he turns against the bodies pressing in to get a look at the tragedy. There’s no reason to worry anymore. He saw her empty gaze staring into the sky.

Yet his heart continues to hammer, as if she’s still running ahead of him.

* * *

Keith returns to the library, the world a barely perceptible hum around him. He sees Hunk before he hears him, mouth moving and a crease in his brow. Before his coworker can notice the tremor in Keith’s hands, he rounds the counter and sits down, gripping his knees beneath the safety of the desktop. Hunk is still talking. Keith forces himself to pay attention, even though every breath is louder than the cars outside.

“Where were you?” asks Hunk.

“Someone stole a book,” says Keith. “I forgot my phone and got lost.”

Hunk frowns. “It’s just a book, don’t get into too much trouble over something like that.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“Are you alright, man?”

“Yeah, ‘course. Just tired.”

“If you’re sure.”

Hunk leaves, and Keith spends the rest of his shift with his knuckles shuddering an erratic beat on the underside of the desk.

* * *

There’s muck clinging to Keith’s limbs, ash and sparks floating in honey air. Shiro is a steadfast shield, arms swinging out.

A glowing red eye settles on Keith.

“Haxus, I want _him.”_

* * *

Keith steps out onto the fire escape. The cool night air washes over the sweat beading on his skin, and goosebumps prickle to life. He settles on the grating, letting his legs dangle between the rails. With his forehead leaning against the cool metal, Keith looks down at the screen of his phone. It blurs slightly, a byproduct of his shivering.

A quick scroll lists the nine text messages and three calls he’s missed. Two calls are from Lance, only a few minutes after he ran out in pursuit of the demon. The third is Hunk, around when he would have arrived for work. The messages are also mostly Lance.

Lance [12:44 PM]:  
_hey man whered u go??_  
_where are u??¿  
__keith_

Something a lot like guilt settles over Keith.

Lance [1:21 PM]:  
_dude srsly where r u_

Lance [3:00 PM]:  
_hunk told me what happened  
__glue ur phone to u i s2g u scared the bejeezus outta me_

Keith huffs a laugh, but it doesn’t sound real to his ears. His mouth feels too dry. He lets the phone slip between his fingers to rest in his lap. There’s still a danger. Other demons knew she was coming to look for him, surely. Maybe Haxus ordered her to go, or his boss with the red eye. The big demon who remembers Keith is the most dangerous. He’ll have to go.

The rail bites into Keith’s forehead as he presses too hard.

He can’t risk anyone being drawn in. He can’t involve Lance anymore than he already has been—and _that_ wasn’t on purpose.

Inhaling deeply, Keith grips his phone tight in his hand and returns inside. Sleep doesn’t come easy by the time he’s able to will his eyes to close, his mind too loud and too fast, but by morning he at least has a plan of action.

Find the big demon. Corner him alone. Remove the threat.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _lmao happiness whats that_


	7. Chapter 7

It’s Saturday morning and the tremble in Keith’s hands hasn’t gone, but at least he can blame it on the caffeine.

“That’s it,” decides Pidge when Keith goes for his fourth cup of coffee, “you’re cut off.”

“You can’t deny me my fuel, Pidge,” says Keith, reaching for the machine.

“I can and I will.” She rests her hand on the computer monitor, and the instant Keith touches the coffee machine, he receives a shock. “Back off.”

Keith shoots her a wounded glare, cradling his hand. “Using your power like that isn’t fair.”

“I’m saving your life,” she drawls.

Muttering, Keith abandons his stained mug beside the machine. Pidge resumes typing away contentedly. Keith’s breath rattles in his lungs. Instead of lingering and risking Pidge’s scrutiny, Keith grabs the half-filled cart of returns and rolls it off to the stacks.

The moment he’s trapped within rows and rows of books, Keith’s mind drifts. He devises a list of places to check, starting with the bar. If he’s not there, would it be worth it for Keith to go inside and ask around? Probably not, that would draw too much attention, and he certainly doesn’t trust his own acting. It might require staking out, waiting for the demon to appear again, but that could take _weeks_ , and in that time…

The possibilities put Keith on edge. A book slides from between his fingers and bounces off the edge of the shelf. He flinches at the sound, but immediately sighs and crouches to pick it up off the confetti-patterned carpet.

“Are you doing alright, my boy?”

Keith’s elbow knocks the handle of the cart and he curbs a curse by turning it into a hiss.

Coran leans against the shelf he just appeared next to and chortles. “Sorry, I didn’t think anything could spook you. Definitely something to make note of.”

“Please,” grimaces Keith, “don’t.”

With another laugh that doesn’t sound promising, Coran takes the book from Keith’s hands and sets it back down onto the cart. It’s an ominous gesture. Keith looks at Coran, trying to hide his apprehension.

Coran quirks his eyebrows. “Don’t look so nervous. I just want to know if you’re doing okay.”

Immediately Keith grabs a different book from the cart to give his hands something to grip. “Yeah, of course.”

“You sure drank a lot of coffee.”

“I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“That can’t be good for your health,” says Coran mildly.

Keith laughs. It sounds as shaky as he feels. “No,” he admits. “I’ll regret it when I crash later.”

“Any particular reason you couldn’t sleep?”

Right to the meat of it. Keith constricts his fingers around the book so hard it’s a wonder the cover doesn’t rip.

“No, just one of those nights, y’know?” He nearly shoots Coran a grin, but stops at the last minute. That would only make things worse, he’s sure.

As it is, Coran doesn’t seem convinced, but he also doesn’t look like he’s going to push. He takes the book he confiscated and slides it into its place. Keith doesn’t begin to relax until he feels the brick of paper in his own grip hit the back of the shelf.

“Might it have anything to do with the accident yesterday afternoon?”

Keith stares at him. He can’t tear his eyes away from his supervisor’s, bright with crinkled crows feet and more piercing than they have any right to be. Keith feels sick, up until Coran rests a hand on his shoulder.

“So I’m right then, you did witness it?” He sighs and gives Keith’s shoulder a squeeze, apparently unaware of how his employee has frozen. “Hunk told me you were chasing a thief, but to think you happened across such a devastating scene on your way back…”

He trails off and offers a sympathetic smile. Keith forces himself to blink.

“If you need to take the day off, all you need to do is ask,” says Coran. “We can hold the fort down easily enough on our own, no harm done. Dare I say Pidge could handle it all by her lonesome given the chance.”

With a hearty clap on Keith’s shoulder, Coran gives him one last blinding smile before leaving. Keith looks down at his book cart. Mechanically, he continues shoving the books onto the shelves. _There’s no reason to leave,_ he tries to convince himself, _there’s nothing wrong_.

_No_ , he thinks. That’s not quite right. If he thinks there isn’t anything wrong, then there really is a problem. There’s no escape from it.

He spends the rest of the day trying to avoid the rest of his coworkers. It’s probably the most productive he’s ever been, hunting through bookcases for those that don’t belong, and rearranging shelves that are out of order. He can’t hide forever, though, especially not when Lance drops in near the end of the shift.

From where he’s hiding by the magazine racks, Keith can hear Pidge and Lance talking, but not what they’re saying. A minute later, Lance pops up at Keith’s elbow.

“‘Sup,” he greets.

“Hey,” says Keith, shuffling all the National Geographic magazines until they’re flush.

“Good news. I got a job.”

Lance beams, and Keith stretches his mouth into a grin as best he can. “Yeah? Where at?”

“Coffee shop.” With a dramatic flourish, Lance leans against the shelf, one knee pointlessly raised. “Ya boy’s gonna be a barista.”

“Does this mean I get free coffee?”

“Jerk, I already buy you coffee all the time.”

Keith snorts, and while his mirth is slight, at least he doesn’t have to force it. “Well, I’m glad you found work.”

“Thanks, man.” The knee goes down, but Lance remains leaning. “So, we were planning on celebrating, kinda. Froyo after work?”

That weird guilt settles over Keith like a cloak. “Ah, I don’t think I can.”

Lance’s nose wrinkles. “Why not?”

“I’m about ready to pass out as it is,” says Keith, allowing his eyelids to bob heavily. In truth, his body feels like it needs to run across the city until all this energy burns up, but his mind feels as though all its usefulness has been sloughed away. “I’m just going to head home and sleep for awhile.”

“Boring,” sniffs Lance. “Fine. What about tomorrow?”

The guilt only gets more smothering. “Maybe,” Keith says. “I’ll text you if I’m up for it.”

Keith gets the distinct impression that he just failed a test. Lance straightens away from the shelf, trailing tapping fingers against it. His eyes bore into Keith, thoughtful—or maybe concerned? Keith remembers he never responded to any of Lance’s messages, and he braces himself for that awkward conversation.

Instead, Lance says, “Alright, man. I hope you sleep well.”

After a brief hesitation, he claps a hand on Keith’s shoulder, gives it a squeeze, and then he’s gone. Unlike when Coran did it, Keith feels a soft warmth spread from the point of contact to mix oddly with the shame.

* * *

Keith spends his entire Sunday scoping out the bar, wandering up and down the main roads, keeping to groups of people to waylay suspicion. By noon, he’s starving. A street vendor half a block away provides him with enough energy to last until early evening, by which point his bladder is fit to burst. A nearby shop allows him to use their washroom. By the time he’s out on the street again, his phone is almost dead, he’s hungry again, and his nerves are frayed to shit. The same strangers that go in eventually come out, none staying longer than one might find suspicious, and none too short that Keith might suspect a trade of some sort.

Yet still, Keith waits, moving between vantage points so that whoever is behind the bar won’t notice him lingering too long within their line of sight. With a final, fitful buzz, Keith’s phone finally dies in his pocket. He grimaces, but forces his attention back to the bar front. The sun sinks, slowly but surely, past the tips of the skyscrapers downtown.

The light goes from a warm gold to a cool blue without Keith realizing. The streetlamps are on in the odd lighting of dusk, the storefronts bright and casting long shadows. There’s a raw restlessness not unlike being pumped too full of caffeine, buzzing at Keith’s fingertips and churning in his stomach. It mixes poorly with his nerves, electrifying them until he begins to feel his breath rough against his throat.

Yet he continues to wait until finally, _finally_ , he sees them.

Maybe it’s just pure coincidence, or maybe they do visit this joint often, but Keith’s gaze falls upon the small group of people—five in all—that approach the bar. Three enter the establishment, but Keith doesn’t get a good look at them because he’s staring at the two that linger outside. A man in a suit, hair slicked back and his expression invisible in the dim light—and another, taller, broader, his physique unmistakeable.

Keith forgets about his nerves in an instant. The two demons split up, the one in the suit strolling down the street while the other roams the nearest sideroad—the same one in which they had their first encounter. Nails bite into Keith’s palm as he clenches his fists.

_This is it_ , he realizes. As soon as this demon is taken care of, there’ll be no one left to identify him. He, and all that he’s unwittingly built in the past couple months, will be safe. Then he can—

He can what? Continue chasing demons? _For Shiro_ , he reminds himself, but that’s what got him into this mess in the first place. With a vicious shake of his head that sends it pounding, Keith forcefully returns his attention back to the task at hand.

The big demon strolls carelessly around the back of the bar. While Suits has his back turned, Keith darts from his spot across the road. Once he’s out of sight, he doesn’t waste anymore time—he did enough of that leading up to this moment.

The demon is approaching the back door. Keith rushes him from behind. The first knee buckles under his kick, and he’s jumping to wrap his arm around the demon’s throat when suddenly the world flips—or rather Keith is the one flipping. He hits the ground, air bursting out of his lungs. Immediately he rolls, preparing to dodge a punch that could very well shatter brick.

Except the demon isn’t coming after him. He’s got an eyebrow cocked, appraising Keith as he shoots to his feet. _Weird_.

Instead of waiting around, Keith steps forward again. Taking out his legs while he’s facing him won’t do, but he busted his jaw once, he can do it again. Keith reintroduces himself with a right hook that lands dead center in the demon’s palm.

_Weird_ , repeats one half of Keith’s brain, while the other stammers hesitantly, _Danger?_

But skin meets skin, and the big demon isn’t big anymore. Startled eyes lock onto Keith’s own as skin flips over like dominoes, limbs shrinking, flesh compacting. It is, perhaps, the strangest thing Keith has ever seen—strange enough that it takes until there’s a totally different person with their hand over his fist for Keith to wrench it back and put some distance between them.

“Who the hell are _you?”_ snaps Keith. “You’re not—” He realizes he doesn’t know the demon’s name. Oh well. “What happened to the—the other demon?”

“Demon,” says the stranger flatly. He looks down at his hand, his brow furrowing slightly. Compared to his previous form, this one is older by maybe two decades, with salt and pepper hair kinked and mussed as if perturbed by the sudden body switch. “Why are you looking for him?”

Keith scowls. “That’s my business.”

“And now you’ve made it mine.” The man levels him with a flinty stare. “What did you intend to do, jumping a demon, as you say, in an alleyway?”

“I was—” Keith breaks off and licks his lips nervously. He suddenly feels like he’s been transported back in time and he’s being reprimanded in the principal’s office. “He’s a danger. What the hell are _you_ doing here in his place?”

The man raises his eyebrows. “He won’t be a danger to you anymore.”

Keith blinks. “What?”

“He won’t be walking the streets anymore,” says the stranger. His gaze darts over Keith’s shoulder, holds there a moment, then returns to meet his eyes. It unnerves Keith, causes him to step back and risk a look over his own shoulder. Nothing.

“So, what, you’re a cop?” asks Keith, shooting the man a suspicious look.

His face is inscrutable when he says, “What I am doesn’t change the facts. You no longer have a demon to chase after, correct? It’s better that you go home.”

As Keith watches, his form shifts like scales flipping backwards. It only takes a moment until the broad demon is standing in front of Keith once again. Despite knowing it isn’t the same person, Keith feels a flare of aggression that he hastens to stamp out. Apparently the cop, or whatever he is, sees the twitch in his expression.

“Hunting demons is a dangerous hobby to have,” he says mildly, but the warning is clear.

Keith tries not to scowl like a petulant child. “It’s not a hobby—I’m not hunting—Mind your own business!”

The man leans forward until Keith takes another wary step back. “Civilians wrapping themselves up in trouble _is_ my business.” He straightens, appraises Keith briefly, then adds, “Keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll be the one hunted.”

Keith recalls the sharp smile of a woman standing at the library entrance. He says nothing, instead turning to leave. If there’s no threat, then—

“Kid.”

Keith scowls to soften the irritation at himself that he responds. “What?”

The man lifts a finger to his lip in a silent hush gesture. Keith hunches his shoulders, nods his head jerkily in affirmation, and hurries out of the alley. In his periphery, he sees the shift of domino skin, but he doesn’t find out what form the man takes next.

On his way back onto the main street, he catches sight of the man in the suit walking in his direction. The thought of the demon remembering him has Keith’s fingers curling into fists, but he shoves them into his pockets before he does something stupid. The issue was already taken care of, there’s no need to pick another fight tonight. The demon’s gaze slides over him. Keith walks on.

* * *

 

The frayed and restless feeling doesn’t leave Keith overnight and carries on into his hospital visit. He only stays a few minutes before the sterility of the facility tugs at pieces of him he didn’t realize were raw. On his way out, he brushes past Allura and barely returns a greeting. On Wednesday, Pidge asks him if he went to the hospital. He tells her something came up and he couldn’t stay long. By her expression, she doesn’t believe him—it’s no secret that Keith has a barren social life—but she doesn’t press. On Thursday, Coran tries to persuade him to go home and fails. Keith ends up falling asleep at a table next to the window. He wakes to Hunk’s hand resting gingerly on his elbow, and eyes dark with concern. Like Pidge, he doesn’t push either, but his gaze bores into Keith’s back when he finally ends his shift.

That evening, he receives a strongly worded text from Lance. After half an hour of Lance being incredibly pushy and Keith trying not to snap, he eventually caves to join them at a nightclub.

Keith is aware he looks like death, but Lance apparently chooses not to notice by grinning wide when he shows up at the club entrance. Hunk on the other hand, the only other person to join them, looks at Keith sympathetically.

Five dollars in exchange for a smudged blue stamp and Keith is walking into the club. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but the wall of sound and flashing lights that hits him like a five foot wave isn’t it. The atmosphere swallows him whole in a heartbeat—and shit, his is racing. It’s impossible to tell what song is playing, the bass cranked so deep that every sound reverberates in his very bones.

_Mistake_ , says his brain so calmly that it’s impossible to deny.

He nearly spins around on his heel to bail, but suddenly there’s a waft of spearmint and Hunk is there. Even in the erratic lighting, Keith can see his smile. Quite abruptly, he no longer wishes to run out of the building. Then Lance appears on his other side, tugging at his sleeve and shouting excitedly about something or other.

The music is still trying to adjust the pulse of his heart, but his brain is no longer teetering on the knife’s edge of panic.

Keith allows himself to be pulled to the bar, Lance leading with determination and Hunk at his back. Keith is still trying to sync himself up with the atmosphere of the club when Lance is lining up a series of shotglasses along the countertop, beading with spilled alcohol and water and several lime seeds.

“—a terrible idea!” Hunk is saying loudly.

With a dismissive flap of his hand, Lance nudges the first glass towards Keith. It’s only then that Keith notices the lime and salt waiting for him, and he realizes there’s five tequila shots. The flickering lights only add to the mischievous glint in Lance’s eyes.

“Of course it’s a bad idea,” scoffs Lance, “but Keith is behind in predrinking—and let’s be real! He looks like he could use a night to get fucked.”

The first thing Keith thinks is that the clear alcohol is tantalizing. Despite Lance’s crude language, Keith can’t deny that the idea of getting drunk—not buzzed but _drunk_ —and being unable to fully feel the guilt and stress is tempting. Even moreso because the poison is sitting right there, bought and paid for at no expense to himself.

“I don’t know if that’s a great remedy,” Hunk says, but he also isn’t making a move to clear the table.

Perhaps Keith _has_ been acting incredibly shitty recently, if even Hunk is putting up such a weak fight to stop him from making a bad decision. The thing is, how bad could it be? It’s just one night.

The moment his logic shrugs, Keith reaches out and downs three shots in quick succession, ignoring the lime and salt until he’s on the fourth and Lance is trying to rub the fruit on his hand. The fifth shot vanishes down Lance’s throat before Keith can get to it.

“Holy _shit_ , you alright?” asks Hunk, brow pinched.

With the hard liquor swishing about his nearly empty stomach, his throat burning and his eyes watering, Keith thinks that maybe he should say no.

Instead, he rasps out, “Definitely.”

Lance laughs and claps him on the shoulder, Hunk’s expression clears, and then the two of them are pulling Keith away from the bar.

Bass thumping, crowd churning, lights pulsing, it takes ten minutes for it to really sink in—the alcohol, that is. His stomach lining hates it, and the burning taste lingers in the back of his throat, and it takes all of Keith’s focus not to throw it up. He doesn’t notice when the discomfort disappears. He doesn’t notice when his limbs grow light and there’s boundless energy in every movement.

Suddenly he’s drunk and dancing in a circle with Hunk and Lance, arms linked and then flying and then he’s laughing and they’re laughing like they’re in elementary school. There’s nothing but the throng of bodies pressing in on them from all sides and the ceiling high above, Lance and Hunk grinning and shouting words nobody understands, but they all find themselves laughing anyway. It’s great—Keith feels great.

The music draws him in and leads him, like Lance did earlier. The current song isn’t a familiar one, but Keith finds himself singing along anyway, finding the drop and swinging to it like everyone around him. They’re a hive mind, sharing the beat amongst each other.

So it isn’t all that strange when one second Keith is with Hunk and Lance, the next he isn’t, and then suddenly there’s the smell of jasmine and something like the forest on a hot day—two young women with strongly scented hair. They’re dancing close to him—with him, on him—so the whisper of their hair over his bare arms is like the cool brush of water. One of them caresses her friend’s jaw. The motion pulls her in, and somehow Keith as well until his chest is flush with her back. The two girls face each other, gazing, smiling, teeth and eyes flashing brighter than the cleavage and shoulders that shimmer with something pink—or maybe purple, or blue.

Blue, deep and dark and almost black until the flash of lights illuminate pupils ringed with sapphire. There are girls that smell like what fun would if it had a scent, that feel good and follow the beat and lead Keith with every motion—but his focus is on Lance. The other woman is sliding a hand behind her, up Lance’s neck, keeping him close as she breathes in her friend, or lover. It’s impossible to tell. Yet Lance is looking at Keith, and Keith is looking back.

Keith doesn’t know when the song changes, but there’s a different beat that’s far more languid than the last. The girls are gone but wisps of jasmine remain—and Lance. He has an arm looped around Keith’s neck, pulling him in closer with every beat until Keith has his hands at Lance’s waist to keep him there.

It takes Keith a moment to realize Lance isn’t just singing along, but talking _to_ him.

“You alright?” asks Lance, tequila and lime strong on his breath.

“Yeah,” says Keith, leaning in closer so he doesn’t have to yell. For some reason it seems important. “Yeah, shit, Lance, I—I’m fucking great. So great.”

Lance laughs, the sound lost in the music, but Keith hears it loud in his chest. “Good,” he says. “I’m glad.”

Fingers slide up into Keith’s hair. His eyes slide shut without really meaning to, leaning his head into the touch. When he opens his eyes, Lance has this look on his face that Keith can’t decipher, except that it seems like he wants to say something. So Keith waits, because it’s Lance. It doesn’t matter what it is, Keith wants to hear it.

Keith sees the moment Lance changes his mind, keeps his mouth closed, and the bass drops. The sudden influx of wild movement from the crowd effectively squeezes Keith and Lance out. They shove their way off the dancefloor.

“—nks!”

Keith turns to Lance, who waits a moment and tries again.

“D—ou—inks?”

“What?”

“Dr—s!”

“ _What?”_

_“Drinks!_ ” shouts Lance.

“Oh.” Keith shakes his head and sees Lance give a muted scoff.

He turns to shove his way back to the bar, leaving Keith to dodge around people to find someplace with more elbow room to wait. Despite not moving much—besides the tap of his foot against the dirty floor—Keith can still feel the music in his limbs as if he’s still dancing. Maybe it has something to do with following the motion of the crowd with his eyes. He’s about to join the dance floor once more on impulse when he catches sight of familiar long hair. He can almost smell the jasmine.

The two girls are against a wall by the bathroom, and looming over them is one very tall man. By the body language alone Keith can tell that the women aren’t comfortable. One of them has her shoulder in front of her friend—a poor shield. Then she pushes him aside and tugs her friend by the wrist, but the man cuts them off. His hands are spread as if placating them. Neither woman’s expression seems remotely soothed.

Although he doesn’t remember crossing the distance, Keith finds his hand clamping down on the man’s shoulder. He wrenches him back, adding a shove to disturb the other man’s balance. Keith receives a sharp scowl for his trouble. Fortunately, the slimeball doesn’t seem to want to pick a fight. He simply glances at the women, eyes narrowed, and then curls his lip and stalks off.

Keith looks at the women. One simply looks relieved, and the other, while her expression flickers with recognition, maintains her wariness. Keith shifts his gaze back to follow the man as he prowls towards the other side of the club.

“Thanks,” Keith hears one of the girls say.

“No problem,” he replies, and then he’s off.

Gaze locked on the other man, Keith weaves between bodies. With the addition of the alcohol in his system, he feels as though he’s moving much faster than normal. In no time at all, he’s catching the door as it’s swinging shut, and there’s a buffet of cool air as Keith steps outside. A quick glance locates the other man. He’s walking briskly—too quick to be without purpose. Ahead of him are two girls, clinging to each other for balance as they sway on heels too high for a night out drinking and dancing. Their backs are to Keith, but more importantly, the man advancing on them.

It’s a man approaching two drunk women, late at night, his pace fast and threatening—but Keith’s alcohol-addled brain exaggerates it into a man with glasses running fast, a branch exploding, his breath coming hard. He sees Matt in the hospital with one leg. He sees a smiling demon. He sees a man, preying on two women.

Keith grabs the man without thinking and throws him into the wall of the club. The women don’t notice—they continue stumbling along. The man gasps for breath, his expression torn between shock and anger.

_No openings_ , instructs Keith’s brain to his limbs.

Obediently, his arm goes up to pin the man’s neck. Keith leans forward. The man’s breath catches, wheezes, tries to inhale despite the pressure. He’s taller than Keith, but he doesn’t use it to his advantage when the panic sets in. The man scrabbles at Keith’s arm.

_Press_.

Keith presses harder.

The man’s breath cuts out altogether. Eyes—wide and terrified—try to fixate on Keith’s face swathed in shadows. It’s only when the tears well up and the eyes start to roll back that Keith realizes: this man is no demon.

He thrusts himself back in a hurry. The man collapses to his knees and coughs and heaves for breath.

Keith runs.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> including your Mandatory Bar Scene™ and Questionable Coincidences™ i can't wait until this is done


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've lost all sense of time and i could've sworn i'd posted like, three days ago??? ANYWAY BELIEB ME IM SORRY also about the sporadic responding/not responding THIS IS JUST HOW I AM

He’s breathing so hard and fast that the air catches in his throat. Fear’s icy fingers are sinking deep inside his head. The alcohol definitely isn’t helping.

Yet Keith runs all the way back to his apartment, head near splitting and his joints creaking at every movement. Everytime he slows down, there’s a man’s terrified gaze boring into him, and Keith is running again.

He fumbles with the keys, but the moment he’s inside, Keith is stumbling to his room. Wrenching open his closet, he starts grabbing clothes from their hangers and flinging them onto his bed. He pulls a drawer from his dresser so hard that it drops to the floor. A coat, a hooded sweater, pants—dark, all of it dark. The lights aren’t on and he isn’t even sure what kind of mess he’s made.

He can’t stop, though. Every pause for breath, every second guess, every hesitation is an invitation for—for what? Keith feels as though something is chasing him, and he’s starting to lose ground to it.

Maybe he’s running from what he’s becoming.

Demons—those have always been what Keith kept an eye out for. _Demons_. That man—that scumbag—for all his looming and his prowling, he wasn’t the same breed of terror that Keith dreamed of.

Nevertheless, Keith nearly killed him. He was going to. His arm—the feeling of his arm pressing the man’s airway shut…

 _Focus_. Keith needs to find his focus. He can’t—no, he can’t do that here. Not if there’s a chance that the same thing might happen to someone else, someone innocent, someone close to him.

He staggers out into the hallway with an unzipped backpack spilling haphazardly stuffed articles of clothing behind him. The bag he drops beside the couch before heading into the kitchen. Here he’s forced to turn on the lights. The sudden blaze burns his eyes, but Keith fights through the sudden pain to grab a mug and fill it with water. His head is throbbing, his mouth parched. Keith manages to drain two mugs of water before the feeling of impending doom returns, raising the hair on the back of his neck, and he’s practically clawing himself out of the kitchen.

With his clothes strewn about, he’s forced to kneel in order to pick them up and stuff them back into the bag. Yet the moment his knees touch the cold floor, it’s like all the fear-driven energy is being drained from him. Keith hauls himself up. The rooms spins. The next instant, he’s collapsing onto the couch, arms draped over the cushions while his legs remain on the floor.

Even with his breath coming fast and the walls whirling and the floor tilting, Keith can’t fight the exhaustion that pulls his eyelids down.

* * *

Keith dreams of shadows. The darkness is thick about him, and when he moves he bumps into things—maybe people?—that don’t react when he shoves past. There are shadows that are deeper than others, in reds and blues that are too bright to be shadows, and yet…

Then the buzzing begins, and before he knows it, Keith is tripping on hundreds of bees as they rise out of the ground. They part where he steps, then surge back to cover his feet. The buzzing grows louder as they spin in the air like leaves buffeted in the wind.

It’s when the darkness recedes and Keith is opening his eyes to the late morning sun that he realizes there are no bees—it’s his phone, vibrating petulantly on the couch cushion beside him. He moves to grab it and instantly regrets it when every single muscle in his body starts sending him red flags. His phone buzzes again as he slowly forces himself into a seated position. One look at the series of messages on his lockscreen and Keith is leaping to his feet.

Lance [12:33 AM]:  
_hwer r u_  
_wherr_  
  
Hunk [12:57 AM]:  
_i gto a taxi you in?_

Lance [12:58 AM]:  
_hnk go t a taxxi  
__yo_

Lance [1:10 AM]:  
_were goin_

Lance [7:12 AM]:  
_hey_  
_u ok?¿_  
_keith??  
__dude ur freakin me out again_

Hunk [7:28 AM]:  
_Lance is coming_

Lance [7:30 AM]:  
_im coming over_  
_idk where u live  
__jk i found it out dont ask me how_

Coran [7:35 AM]:  
_Is everything alright?_

Lance [7:44 AM]:  
_im at th e block  
__dude seriously answer me_

Lance [7:59 AM]:  
_at ur building_  
_comin up_  
_this sounds creepy but w/e_  
_keith u better be fuckin sleeping or_  
_or else  
__idk_

Keith stares at the mess he’s made of his apartment. Despite the protesting of his limbs, Keith grabs for the clothes and starts stuffing them into his backpack from when he’d given up the night before. Or earlier that morning.

He’s only got a hoodie crammed in when his front door opens up and he hears a hesitant, “Hello? Your door is kind of open. I swear to god if you’re murdered or something—”

Lance trails off when he steps in and see Keith hunched over his own clothes. In a bout of stupidity, Keith grabs the backpack and hides it around the couch. Lance’s eyes follow the blatant motion, and then slowly lift to stare at Keith.

“Are you...going somewhere?” asks Lance, expression blank.

Keith considers his choices, of which include lying to Lance’s face (unsuccessfully), or telling him the truth. Both would backfire hard.

So Keith settles with, “Maybe.”

A bad decision. Lance’s face twitches; his eyebrows raise, his lip curls in disbelief. Then it all shutters and he directs a mirthless laugh at the floor.

“You’re _maybe_ leaving,” says Lance, making it sound even more stupid to Keith’s ears. He huffs another laugh. “Wow. _Wow_. Okay.”

For a long moment, Lance says nothing. Keith becomes painfully aware of how grubby he is, wearing the same clothes from the club, dishevelled after having ran all the way home and then sleeping half on the couch after trying to pack his life away. He can almost physically feel Lance’s gaze physically scraping over him, taking it all in, until the hardness in his eyes is keeping Keith’s own from blinking.

Lance’s shoulders drop an inch. “I thought,” he starts, his voice oddly strained, “that you pulled a _me_ , and ghosted. I thought you ran away.” Keith doesn’t try to correct him—that such was his intention—when Lance continues, “I kinda get why Hunk keeps an eye on me now.”

He smiles, just as superficial as his laugh. Keith’s breath slows.

“I know you’re not just talking walks in the park at night.”

_Oh god, no._

“I saw you fighting demons, remember?”

 _No, no no no_.

“You have your secrets, and I get that.”

“Do you?” blurts out Keith before he can stop himself and filter his words through a brain that’s conveniently on standby.

Lance stares at him, and he stares back.

“The demon in the park—” Lance begins and Keith balks.

“Don’t,” he snaps, as good as an admission as Keith will ever allow. He doesn’t want to hear it—the words that Lance might choose. The accusation. No, the _truth_. Keith feels sick. “I’m—I’ve got some shit to figure out, okay? I’m going—I have to leave.”

“Keith, if you’re—if you’re in trouble—”

“I’m not the one in trouble!”

Keith’s mouth snaps shut. His eyes water; he tries to remember how to blink. The look on Lance’s face makes Keith feel like a criminal caught in the act.

 _He’s not wrong_. Keith squeezes his eyes shut, tries to collect himself.

“There are some things I need to do,” he says. _Refocus._ “I need time.”

“What things?” Lance’s voice is steady.

“Just— _things.”_ Keith opens his eyes; Lance’s expression is no different. The unspoken accusations, the concern, and there _must_ be fear there. Keith finds himself searching for it, and irritation spikes unbidden. “Stay out of it, Lance.”

Lance doesn’t stay out of it, though. His lip curls again. “No. If you’re poking the bear—picking fights with demons—then I’m not going to _stay out of it_. You’re going to get hurt, or get in trouble, or some shit. I’m not going to just watch it happen.”

“I’m not asking you to watch it happen,” growls Keith, turning away to grab clothes from the floor. “I told you, I’m leaving. Before something does happen.” His brain provides him with a series of images: Shiro, Matt, a lifeless gaze, a body on the street. “I need to… refocus.”

Hurriedly, he crams the fallen articles into his backpack. Lance doesn’t move from Keith’s periphery. He’s only watching Keith move, that feeling as though he’s being chased edging in on him.

“Keith—” His voice isn’t steady anymore, as though he’s figured something out. Keith finds he doesn’t want to listen.

“Don’t, Lance—”

“You’re not a monster—”

“—I don’t need your _validation_ —”

“—but you _will be_ if you keep doing this shit!”

“ _Why?”_ snarls Keith, thrusting the bag down and rounding on Lance, all the cards out on the table. “Don’t they deserve it?”

Lance freezes, the horror plain on his face. _Good_ , then maybe he’ll understand why he has to _go_. Yet Lance persists. “You’re a vigilante, Keith—but not a good one. Anti-heroes always fall at some point and you—god, I’m scared, Keith. I’m really fucking scared.”

“I’m not a demon.”

“Not yet.”

Lifeless eyes. A body on the road. “...You don’t understand.”

“Please.” Lance teeters on the edge of begging. “Don’t keep doing this.”

“I have to,” says Keith, feeling a buzz in his fingertips that feels nothing like alcohol. The thoughts are sloshing around, spilling out of him in words before he can stop himself, “I have to find the demons that destroyed my life—destroyed my brother’s—”

Yet Lance reacts as if he’s known all along, his expression hard. “Has anyone ever told you that vengeance is the quick route to the dark side? Keith, I’m not asking you to forgive and forget, just stop _hurting people_.”

_He knows, he knows, he knows—_

“They’ll keep hurting other people; innocent people, _good_ people, like Shiro—” The very air is sour in Keith’s mouth.

“This isn’t about those people! This is about _you_! Don’t sacrifice your humanity so easily!”

“I’m not sacrificing anything that isn’t worth it, you don’t get it.”

“Don’t I?” snaps Lance, finally striding forward to the couch. Keith barely flinches when Lance reaches out to wrap his fingers around one of the bag’s straps. An anchor. “For fuck’s sake, Keith, are you even listening to me?”

“Are you even listening to _me?”_ Keith retorts angrily. “What am I supposed to do when people are being hurt, suffering, _dying_ —I’d be turning my back on them. I’d be the demon, then.”

“No—no, that isn’t true.”

“If I’m the only thing between those sick fucks and another person’s life being destroyed, then there isn’t a sacrifice I won’t make.”

“ _Keith._ ”

“I’m sorry, Lance,” grates out Keith, and he gives the bag a yank that breaks Lance’s grip.

Lance’s fingers close on nothing as he jolts forward from the force. His expression is crumbling, the mask of anger giving way to desperation. “You’re not the only thing. It isn’t you against the world. Please. Don’t go.”

Keith turns away with a final, “I’m sorry” and Lance crumples.

Where there was trembling rage, twisted frustration and wild eyes, now there is dread. The only thing that remains is the stare. “No, you’re not,” he whispers.

Somehow, that ruins Keith more than their yelling. This is Lance, fingers uncurling from his phantom grip, motionless in Keith’s periphery as he hitches his backpack over one shoulder. This is Lance giving up—and Keith feels it in the echo of his hollow chest.

Cold fingers wrap around the cold knob, equally yearning for warmth. Keith opens the door.

“You’re important to us,” says Lance.

Keith pauses.

“You’re important to Hunk, and Pidge—and Shay, Coran, your brother. You’re important to _me_.”

Lance’s voice is a quiet thing, weak and wretched.

“If you—and I know this sounds selfish,” murmurs Lance as Keith slowly turns, “but if you could just… _stay_. For us.”

The door slams shut behind Keith. The hall absorbs any chance of an echo. It’s just another insignificant detail of life, trailing behind Keith as he leaves the floor, the building, and he’s halfway down the block when he finally stops.

His lungs are burning but he doesn’t remember sprinting; his knees ache as if he’d been crouching for hours; there’s something solid in his throat that no amount of clearing can get rid of and oh god—oh god it _hurts_.

He remembers Shiro telling him that not everything that hurts is something he would be able to see. He remembers thinking he meant broken bones and headaches, not this heavy, gripping feeling like the ache of holding back tears—except it’s not just the back of his throat but everything in his chest and stomach and—shit, even his joints are shuddering with the effort of—of what?

Holding back, maybe.

Keith’s backpack is full of stones, every single one the embodiment of some part of Lance’s features that Keith’s memory dredges up: a mouth lined by anger, a brow pinched by concern, and eyes glazed with doomed tears. Lance, a friend, an important somebody who cares, who noticed Keith acting differently, and who came to him when he needed him most. A young man with so much already to worry about, but enough sympathy to spare for Keith. A friend who still tried in the midst of giving up—who cried as Keith walked out the door, who could have tried to force Keith to stay, but didn’t.

There wasn’t much to begin with, but Keith feels the strength drain from his body. Every breath is heavy, like his own regret is a hand holding his lungs flat. Keith pictures himself leaving behind the people important to him—his _friends_ —and maybe he _can_ see the heartbreak where before he saw apathy.

Keith turns around, and the ache and the burn and the pain is because he’s sprinting now. Desperation lends him speed, and the knob is still frigid in his palm as he wrenches open the door to his apartment. His backpack lands with a clatter and a thump on the floor.

For a moment, he doesn’t see Lance, and for a moment longer he fears the man is gone and he’s lost something important, but then there he is, sitting on the floor and facing the window. His legs are drawn up, back hunched, and his breath is coming fast and shuddering—because of _Keith_.

What kind of person would Keith be if he left someone, a person so irrevocably dear to him, vulnerable and alone?

Certainly not the person—the misfit, the _human_ —that he wants to be.

When Keith next breathes in, it’s as shaky as Lance’s, but his voice returns steady as he says, “Lance.”

The sniffing is loud, and Keith repeats himself a second time, then a third, until Lance looks up and around with swollen eyes. Keith’s heart hurts. He leaves the door wide open as he crosses the hall and kneels in front of Lance.

“I’m sorry,” he begins, but it’s evidently the wrong thing to say when Lance grimaces. Keith lifts his hands to rest on top of Lance’s, white knuckled and clammy, drawing his pained gaze back to him. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I didn’t… It’s a stupid thing to say, I know, but I just got wrapped up in myself that I forgot… there are so many more people important to me. So about what I said before, about being willing to sacrifice anything. I’m sorry. I lied.”

Lance’s eyes are wide, but they’ve lost their panicked edge from earlier. Incredulously, they grow even bigger when Keith leans in to press his forehead to Lance’s. His hands twitch beneath Keith’s—once, twice—before turning over. His fingertips brush against Keith’s inner wrist, then push against his skin as if checking for a pulse. There’s a message there Keith can’t decipher, but he accepts it nevertheless.  
  


Before he can react, Keith’s hands are empty and his arms full of Lance. He smells like the library; his clothes are spearmint and old books, his skin the faint tickle of hand sanitizer, and his hair the warmth of fresh muffins. It’s a welcoming fragrance, mixing with the busy smoke and gas and pavement scent of the city. The other man is burning hot, seeping heat through their clothes—or maybe that’s just Keith. Certainly his heart is thumping louder than before, drumming a beat against his ribcage.

“You’re not going,” says Lance, almost a question, but not quite.

“No,” Keith promises into his shoulder, “I’m not.”

“If something happens, you’ll let me know, right?”

A pause. Lifeless eyes, a body—

“Keith.” Lance draws away, their arms still around each other but his eyes boring into Keith’s. “You don’t need to tell me what’s already happened but… from now on. If you’re in trouble. Talk to me, please?”

Keith doesn’t know if he can, should something terrible happen again, but he wants to believe he will. So he meets Lance’s gaze with something maybe confident, and nods.

“And don’t ignore my texts,” adds Lance sternly.

“Oops,” grimaces Keith. “I was sleeping. Sorry.”

“I thought you were actually dead, so.”

“I’m _really_ sorry.”

Lance frowns deeply at him, but relief pulls at the expression. “I forgive you. This time.”

He nuzzles back into Keith, allowing Keith to inhale the mixture of smells he has come to associate with comfort. Then suddenly Lance is jerking back, eyes wide, mouth agape, and he’s withdrawing his arms from around Keith as if he’s been burned. It takes Keith a moment, Lance scrambling away and to his feet, for him to realize—well, the line has been toed long enough, hasn’t it?

Keith rises, straightening his back, drawing confidence from the way Lance’s face is red and his gaze is trying—and failing miserably—to focus anywhere but Keith.

Yet he finds the moment he opens his mouth, all that confidence drains away until all he can manage is an unsteady, “Hungry?”

At least Lance is just as off-balance. “Y-yeah. Starving.”

* * *

There’s a puddle of water in the kitchen that Keith didn’t realize he made the night previous. Dumping a rag on top of it, he turns to hunting through his fridge for something to eat, overtly aware of the fact that Lance is leaning in the doorway.

“I’m not going to jump out the window,” mumbles Keith as he pulls out eggs.

“It’s not that,” says Lance, averting his gaze as he continues, “I just want to be here. Is that so bad?”

Keith pretends washing the sole pan he owns takes his full concentration. “S’fine.”

They’re basically stomping all over the line, now. Despite keeping conversation while Keith serves them eggs and bacon on toast, there’s a familiar atmosphere growing between them—someone wants to say something, yet they’re waiting for the other to begin.

It takes Keith finishing first, and spending the next thirty seconds watching Lance mop up yolk with his bread crust, to crumble.

“Lance.” The other man looks up. Keith swallows around the lump in his throat. “I want to spend the day with you. Is that—is that alright?”

He tries to rein in his flush. By the heat rushing into his face, he’s failed miserably. Lance is staring, eyes flicking between Keith’s, obviously trying to read his expression and the intent behind his words.

“You want to...hang out?” prompts Lance slowly.

The heat intensifies. “Um, more like a date?”

“Oh.”

There’s a pause, wherein Keith considers the fact that his timing may have been utter shit, simply due to the incredibly heavy argument they had not an hour before. Lance probably still thinks he’s flakey, and about to go flipping off the fire escape, never to be seen again. It probably would have been a better idea if Keith had spent the next week bribing him with coffees and favours. The silence continues to stretch on. Keith is finally considering jumping out the window.

“Okay,” says Lance.

Keith goes very, very still. Did he hear that right?

“Okay,” repeats Lance, his head ducking down, but not before Keith sees it: the bashful, pleased smile curving at the corners of his mouth. “That’d be, um, nice.”

Then he looks up, skin turning ruddy. They share embarrassed grins, and then several seconds later, they’re laughing at themselves and each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alrighty toots xmas is coming up and i celebrate tf out of that and i've got a couple ~*gifts of fic*~ i'm in the midst of writing so this thing is on hold for after the holidays when i'm sober ⌒°(❛ᴗ❛)°⌒
> 
> and [the last art piece by dodothebard](http://dodothebard.tumblr.com/tagged/klancebb17) >:D


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year folks!! We're gonna obliterate 2018 on our own terms!!

“They changed the colour of the banner!” squawks Lance in disgust. “Now it just clashes. Gross.”

“It’s…it’s just blue,” points out Keith.

After leaving Keith’s apartment, the two of them ended up taking a bus into the downtown core. The city smell is particularly strong here, but the bright shop fronts and advertisements are enough of a visual distraction that Keith forgets the scent of people and garbage and cars. With no destination in mind, they’d just been wandering, but now Lance is taken personal offence to the billboard posted on the side of news station.

“Just blue, he says,” tuts Lance. “It used to be a lovely navy, but they’ve made it like—a _default_ blue.”

Keith makes the mistake of asking, “What’s default blue?”

Lance’s face twists so much that he may as well be featured in a Lovecraft novel.

“Nevermind,” says Keith hastily. “Forget I said anything—”

“No, I’m teaching you,” deadpans Lance as soon as his face is under control. “C’mere, you.”

By the time they’ve made it to the city’s central square, Keith has been thoroughly educated in what makes a blue _default_ , as well as ten different other kinds of blue, the hues that flatter each, and how Lance used his knowledge of colour theory in his current outfit. Keith also learned how unrefined his own method of dressing apparently is.

Despite the teasing, Keith can’t find it in himself to be annoyed. Lance’s smiling face, he decides, really is the best, and he’s smiling _a lot_. At the advertisements, at the news flickering on the square’s big screen, at the squall of children and the rough laughter of two homeless folk sitting beside each other—all of it receives Lance’s attention in one way or another. His head tips to catch part of a conversation, his eyes follow bright pink hair, his hand lifts to catch a door before it closes on somebody.

Meanwhile, Keith is watching him, listening to him, feeling his presence radiating warmth that has nothing to do with the sun beating down on them. Keith allows his gaze to follow Lance’s and he sees more than he ever did walking these same streets alone.

They eat lunch at a hotdog stand, the owner of which Lance greets by name. Lance points out the people on the corners preaching about God, accepting a pamphlet from a smiling girl but avoiding the ones with signs across the road. They pause to watch a street performer playing numerous instruments at once, and when Lance goes to flick a coin into his case, Keith does the same.

When their hotdogs are finished, Lance is the one that suggests watching a movie, and Keith—having no knowledge of what is currently playing—allows him to choose with a critical eye and a memory of reviews. In the end, Keith has to admit there’s something relaxing about watching someone else’s drama on screen. By the way Lance keeps glancing at him all the way out of the theater, maybe he had a point to prove.

It’s within the first five minutes of leaving the theater that Keith feels the change.

The sun is setting, the sky purpling like bruised skin, the majority of the light blocked by towers and skyscrapers. The lights are bright, flickering as people spill out of the theater and the doors open and close incessantly. Keith finds himself turning away from the noise and the light to look across the road.

A parking lot. The shadows are deep. No matter how he stares, his eyes can’t penetrate the shroud. He feels a wall behind him, though he doesn’t recall backing up.

“Keith.”

With a start, Keith turns to look at Lance. The other man’s gaze moves from peering around the cramped lot to meeting his eyes. He isn’t smiling.

“There’s nothing there,” says Lance.

Keith knows what he means. He knows that, and yet—

“Sorry,” mumbles Keith, ashamed and frustrated. “It’s just…”

What is there to say? Thankfully, Lance doesn’t need the words. He steps forward into Keith’s space, the fabric of their shirts brushing, shoes almost aligned. Cool fingers reach out to take Keith’s hands. He allows them to be lifted, and then Lance is moving away from the theater, drawing Keith along with him.

“The city isn’t that bad at night,” says Lance idly, looking down at their joined hands.

Every person that passes by, Keith finds his eyes following, noting their balance, their pockets, where their hands are—

“Keith. You listening?”

He forces himself to look at Lance, who looks pointedly at their hands. Keith’s have been squeezing his, hard. Hastily, Keith lets go. Before he can shove them into his pockets, Lance snatches one back. Keith stares as Lance threads their fingers together.

“My hands are sweaty,” blurts out Keith.

“I noticed,” says Lance, and he gives Keith’s hand a squeeze. Gentle. Reassuring. “Is this okay?”

There’s something growing in Keith’s throat, pressing against the back of it until it aches. He swallows hard. “Yeah.”

“Come,” says Lance, pulling Keith to match his stride as he turns. “I want to show you something.”

“What thing?”

“A thing.” Lance’s grip tightens again for a brief second. “A concept. You’ll see.”

“Is it the difference between lapis and default blue?” jokes Keith weakly.

“We’ve already been through _that_ ,” retorts Lance. “No, it’s… well, it’s this.”

They’re standing at the corner of one of the intersections bordering the square. Just as they halt, the light changes and it’s a pedestrian free-for-all. At sunset, the square and its surrounding businesses are bustling. Restaurants and bars are full, the clothing stores at the brink of closing time, and gathered in the square itself, sitting on folding chairs and blankets, are several hundred people.

Keith stares as Lance insistently tugs him along. “What’s going on?”

Lance doesn’t get the opportunity to reply—everyone suddenly rises as one to release a resounding roar. Keith freezes, his heart pounding, back to holding Lance’s hand in a vice grip. He’s just about to spin around and haul ass out of there when Keith registers the giddy laughter. People are clapping, obviously cheering, and a group of teens are blowing excitedly on kazoos.

“It’s the playoffs!” explains Lance, stepping into Keith’s line of sight. He’s beaming, a blue and green glow lighting up the sharp features of his face. “They show all the big games on screen—”

Keith follows Lance’s pointing finger to the large display tilted down towards the crowd. Onscreen is what appears to be a soccer match. Now that he notices, Keith sees people wearing jerseys in the crowd, some with flags and other team pride merchandise.

“You should see this place when it’s Superbowl season.” Lance gives an exaggerated shudder. “They have to close down the roads.”

“I never knew,” says Keith as his gaze returns to the players lining up for a corner kick, “that this was a thing.”

“Hey, neither did I,” grins Lance. “Not for awhile—but you know now!”

“Yeah.” The kick goes wide and the crowd sighs in relief. “Yeah, now I know.”

The city is brighter than he thought.

Other smaller screens are cycling through advertisements, two of them showing the news from two different stations. With the captions on, Keith can see one channel’s anchors discussing the future presidential debate. The other is running through the news stories of the day: the upcoming festival, the closing of a beloved cupcake shop, the expansion of the city’s industrial sector, serial house robberies, the body of one Thace Suhartoputra found in a pond, a missing woman from the suburbs…

The list goes on. The crowd hollers at a yellow card. The news anchor switches to the weather.

The city is bright, its shadows are deep, but it isn’t for Keith to do something about it. Lance’s hand in his is cool and warm all at once. Blue eyes fall to look at him.

“How did you do it?” Keith finds himself asking.

Lance cocks an eyebrow. “Do what?”

“Fix yourself.”

“Fix—?” Lance breaks off and huffs a wry laugh. “I’m still working on it. I still _constantly_ watch what I say and—and when someone does something I ask, I’m always wondering whether it’s because they want to or because of my power.”

Keith watches the pull of his eyebrows and the curve of a dissatisfied smile.

“I’m still trying,” says Lance.

“Oh,” says Keith.

“But,” continues Lance, “I don’t think I’ll ever really be how I was before the storm.”

“No,” murmurs Keith. “Me either.”

Lance’s hand squeezes tight around Keith’s. “And that’s okay. People are always changing, right?”

“Yeah.” Whether it be because of the storm, the hunting, the people, change comes. Keith decides that whatever direction he grows as a person, it can’t be bad if Lance is there beside him. “Yeah, you’re right.”

* * *

Hunk is staring at Keith. Hunk has been staring at Keith intermittently for the past hour. Keith is beginning to grow concerned—well, that’s a lie. He’s been concerned for fifty-eight of those sixty minutes, trying to figure out what he’s done that Hunk has to watch him so determinedly.

Eventually Hunk does make his way to the front desk when he’s done “helping people” (staring over their shoulder at Keith while speaking to them) and “putting away books” (missing the shelf and stooping down to pick them up shamefaced).

“So…” Hunk rests his chin on arms crossed over the counter. “What’d you do a few days ago?”

Keith tries to look occupied. “Uh. Relaxed?”

“That so…”

“Y...yes?”

Hunk’s gaze is definitely boring a hole through the side of Keith’s head. “The day after we went to the club…”

Oh, shit.

“...and you vanished on us…”

What did Lance tell him?

“...and Lance went to check up on you. You were just… relaxing?”

“...Yes.”

“With Lance?”

Keith says nothing. The phone in his pocket, complete with a couple’s selfie courtesy of Lance, feels heavy.

Hunk pulls himself over the counter to peer closely at Keith. “He’s been… giddy, lately. Since then. He came home late, said you were fine, went to bed, and I haven’t been able to catch him since.”

Not for the first time, Keith wishes he could control the capillaries in his face. Currently, they’re supplying an entire body’s worth of blood straight to his cheeks.

“Are you talking about Lance?”

Keith sees no windows in which he can throw himself out of when Coran slides into view. The twitch of his moustache signals trouble.

“Yeah,” sighs Hunk, slumping. “I’m trying to figure out what’s got him in such a good mood.”

“Certainly just knowing he’s happy is good enough?” suggests Coran. Okay, maybe it’s not so bad that he’s intruded.

“Except I _wanna know_.” Hunk juts out his jaw obstinately.

“Well then,” says Coran, “ perhaps the boy’s finally fallen in love.”

In that moment, Keith achieves human combustion.

“Do you have a fever, Keith? My, your face is rather red.”

He certainly feels lightheaded.

“I’m...books. Put away.” Keith rises to his feet, stubbornly avoiding meeting Hunk’s wide-eyed stare. “Excuse me.”

Escaping feels like admittance. Dragging the returns cart into the mystery thriller section, Keith tries to come to terms with the fact he may be forced to find a new job to avoid Hunk’s scrutiny. It comes with a twinge of shame; there shouldn’t be anything wrong with admitting he went on a date with Lance. It isn’t the act that embarrasses him, _that_ at least he knows for certain. Perhaps it’s more to do with someone knowing something so personal. Well, if it ends up going anywhere, there’s no way it’d stay a secret.

Somehow, Keith feels even warmer at the thought of the next date, and going on another after that, over and over until one of them works up the courage to ask to—to go steady…

Keith leans his head against the book spines and groans. It’s presumptuous, but his imagination is running wild and his palms are getting sweaty just at the idea of holding Lance’s hand again. Hell.

His palms only get clammier when he hears the telltale call of Lance announcing his entry to the library. Shuffling to the end of the shelf, Keith peeks out to see Lance striding up to the front desk, tray of coffee in hand. Hunk and Coran are still there in fervent discussion, but both perk up when Lance approaches. Keith sees the danger immediately.

He’s too late to intercept, arriving at a brisk walk just as Coran finishes saying, “Taking your relationship with Keith to the next level, eh?”

“I _what?”_ squawks Lance. Keith tries to veer away but hits his knee off the edge of a display. Lance rounds on him, reddening. “What did you tell them?!”

“Oh my sweet baby Jesus,” whispers Hunk. “It’s true.”

Lance gapes at his best friend, mouth working but only unintelligible sounds coming out.

“We didn’t!” wheezes Keith. “Anything! Do anything! Just—uh….”

“Just what?” Hunk looks ravenous.

“Ohoho, just a little something or other?” suggests Coran, fingers stroking his moustache.

Keith definitely feels feverish. “We just—”

“—went downtown,” says Lance, “and got hotdogs—”

“—watched a movie—”

“—soccer game—”

“—held hands—”

“Keith!”

“Fuck.”

“I’m going to cry,” declares Hunk.

“Young love,” sighs Coran. “I remember when I was a strapping young lad, although I’m still strapping—”

“So, that festival, huh!” yelps Lance. “Gonna be fun! Only five days away!”

“Can’t wait!” heaves Keith.

“I’m crying,” says Hunk.

“Oh, speaking of the festival,” says Coran, blissfully unaware of Keith and Lance’s panicking and Hunk’s dewy eyes, “I’m closing the library early Saturday. I expect to see you kids visiting my booth!”

Hunk momentarily forgets his sentimentality to blink distractedly at Coran. “You’ve got a booth?”

“I’m selling homemade pies.” Coran’s moustache seems to puff up with his pride.

“Pies, you say…”

With Hunk and Coran’s attention diverted, Lance slumps against the counter. Keith can understand; he isn’t sure whether his weak knees are due to hitting the table or a lack of blood flow. Regardless, he finds himself leaning beside Lance.

“Lance,” says Keith, eyes on Hunk and Coran to make sure they’re preoccupied. “About our date tonight…”

“I’m sneaking out,” says Lance tiredly. “You don’t gotta tell me.”

* * *

Just as Keith hoped, their second date led into a third date, and a fourth, and again until every night up until the festival saw Keith psyching himself up and trying to unclammify his hands. He feels greedy, taking Lance’s free time in the evening as well as whenever he drops by the library. Yet he can’t bring himself to actually regret it, especially when he gets to see Lance’s face—multiple times!—flushing when either of them ask for another date, and another, and _another…_

Keith doesn’t know much about dating, but he knows that time with Lance is never time wasted. He feels a little bad when he arrives at the library—closed, as promised—and immediately looks around for Lance, as opposed to Pidge and Shay already standing there.

“Hello, Keith!” greets Shay brightly.

“Hi,” says Keith distractedly.

“Your boyfriend’s five minutes away,” drawls Pidge. “You can chill.”

“Who—I—what—”

Shay giggles while Pidge cocks an eyebrow at Keith’s stammering. “Hunk told us you and Lance have been going out together every night this past week.”

“We’ve been...hanging out,” admits Keith weakly. “We’re not… not… boyfriends…”

“Not yet,” sighs Pidge knowingly. “Not yet.”

“Don’t worry about it,” adds Shay kindly. “There’s no rush. I’m sure you’ll both know when it’s right to talk about it.”

Keith is willing to believe that the sun does, in fact, shine out of Shay’s backside— _not_ that he would ever say that out loud. Instead, he gives her a smile that’s as relieved as it is thankful. With Shay as a buffer, they manage to avoid embarrassing conversation until Hunk and Lance arrive.

“Sorry we’re late,” says Hunk, “Lance couldn’t figure out what to wear.”

“A blatant lie,” declares Lance.

As they walk the couple blocks over to the festival, the hot sun beating down on them, Lance automatically falls into step beside Keith. Nobody comments on it—Hunk and Shay are brushing shoulders and Pidge is in the lead, urging them to walk faster. When their own elbows knock, Keith is tempted to take Lance’s hand, but he wimps out at the last second. As if reading his mind, Lance’s palm slides flush against Keith’s. Their fingers thread together as if they’ve had tons of practice to make it second nature.

Keith doesn’t get to enjoy the contact for very long. As soon as they’re five feet deep on the blocked off road, someone running around with a super soaker decides they’d make for great targets. With a yelp, Lance springs away, leaving Keith to receive a faceful of water.

“Why?” asks Keith calmly, water dribbling down his chin and under his collar.

The offender beams at them, offers a merry “Happy Founder’s Day!” and flounces off to shoot at other festival-goers.

“Refreshed?” asks Pidge innocently as Lance splutters a laugh.

“Incredibly, thanks.”

Lance wipes an invisible tear. “Gotta be quick.”

“Five bucks says Keith wins,” stagewhispers Hunk.

“Wins _what?”_ snorts Lance.

Shay hums thoughtfully. “Done.”

“Watch yourself,” says Keith ominously.

Winning involves Keith using Lance as a shield the next time someone with a watergun appears—which is often, as it turns out. Volunteers jog about between booths selling food and toys and knickknacks, squirting water at the crowd. One stranger uses their power to turn the water into a cloud that Pidge walks out of with fogged-up glasses. Another drags her friend over to dance in it. By the time they reach Coran’s booth, they’re all varying degrees of wet, from Pidge’s damp to Lance’s soaked.

“Met the infantry, did you?” laughs Coran the moment he sees them.

Lance stops a few yards from the booth in order to shake out his hair. Pidge leaps away to avoid the worst of the spray. There’s a delightful aroma wafting from the booth, luring Hunk and Shay in to breath it in deeply and Keith to take a curious whiff.

“What kind of pies did you make?” asks Hunk, eyelids barely fluttering in muted ecstasy.

Coran rubs his hands together excitedly. “I’ve got blackberry, blueberry, strawberry rhubarb, beer chicken, agave pumpkin, and peach apple.”

“One of those is not like the others,” says Lance as he moves up beside Keith.

Pidge leans back the moment Hunk leans in to get a better look at the choices. “Beer...chicken?” asks Hunk slowly.

“Yes! A match made in heaven!” In Coran’s hands a slice of pie appears on a bright orange plate. “Would you like to try? No cost at all for my lovely employees and their own.”

“Question,” says Lance as the group forms a semicircle around the pie. “Is this combination something to do with your powers, or…?”

“Just good ol’ human intuition,” says Coran with a hearty guffaw. “If I had any storm-related abilities however, you know I would use them for the good of the pies.”

“Of course,” says Hunk, echoed hesitantly by Lance and Pidge.

The smell emanating from the booth lures in more customers, so the group moves off. The semicircle becomes a circle, the pie at its center, forks in hand, Hunk’s face getting real close in his curiosity. Keith isn’t sure whether the thing smells good or bad, or perhaps more of a bizarre mixture of the two as his brain tries to pin it down.

They end up spending a solid minute considering the pie, after which Shay sighs and goes for the first bite. The rest watch her apprehensively. When her face doesn’t collapse in the dying throes of her tastebuds, Hunk swoops in next, followed by Lance and a far more skeptical Keith and Pidge.

Keith can’t say it tastes like beer _or_ chicken, but it’s definitely...something. Again, he isn’t sure if it’s good or bad. His stomach is positive it doesn’t want to continue testing it, however. The taste lingers on his tongue heavily.

“Not bad,” says Hunk thoughtfully. Shay hums her agreement.

“Hard pass,” says Pidge when Hunk offers her another bite. With a flick, her fork goes sailing into the nearest garbage can.

“Yeah, it’s not…” Keith purses his lips. “Not really for me, I think.”

Lance’s fork stabs another bite from the pie. “Suit yourself.”

Ten minutes after the pie is annihilated, Shay is forced to hunt down something to sooth their stomachs.

“He doesn’t realize the weapon he’s made,” whispers Lance as he and Hunk wait like baby chicks for Shay to heal them.

Keith has to laugh at that, although unlike Pidge, he tries to keep it at a reasonable level. They take a seat the moment a bench opens up. Keith perches on the back, one foot propped up on the armrest. The number of people roaming the streets has swelled since they arrived. As Keith watches, someone getting sprayed by a supersoaker turns the water into snow that glitters in the sunlight. Three different types of music are playing—folk, bubblegum pop, and further on is rap’s thumping beat. Children sit atop their parents’ shoulders; one man spins around to the delighted squeals of his daughter, rainbow tinsel gleaming in her hair. Keith can smell candy apples and caramel popcorn, corndogs and nachos, the sweet and savoury mixing to make Keith’s mouth water. It takes a combination of self-restraint and Lance and Hunk’s twin expressions of discomfort to convince Keith to avoid the funnel cake for now.

Yet amidst the revelries, the food, the dancing and music, Keith feels that something is missing. Hunk is grilling Shay on the properties of ginger, Pidge and Lance are coming up with stories about passersby, and Lance’s shoulder is leaning against Keith’s leg. It’s objectively— _subjectively—_ a good situation, and yet.

It takes Keith a moment to place it when his eyes fall on the girl with rainbow hair. She’s leaning down, hands grabbing, giggling at a child a few years older that looks like she could be her sister. Keith wonders if Shiro would have liked this—no, he knows. They’d gone to see fireworks before, just the two of them, popsicles dripping over their hands with their eyes glued to the display. The thought that Shiro won’t ever go to a festival again—won’t joke about Keith remembering where the lost children’s center is, won’t laugh at a smear of powdered sugar on Keith’s nose, won’t give him piggyback rides when he gets too tired or too drunk or too enthusiastic and sprains his ankle—is a vice grip around his heart.

“You alright?”

Keith looks down at Lance, gazing up at him. Dark blue eyes scan his face, flicking to the tension in his jaw before Keith can unclench his teeth.

“M’fine,” lies Keith. “Sorry.”

Lance looks at him unblinkingly until Keith is forced to look down at his hands knotted in his lap.

“Keith and I are going to grab something,” says Lance abruptly to the others.

“Don’t get lost,” says Pidge with an amused lilt.

Lance snorts. “Text me if you go somewhere.”

A long-fingered hand brushes over Keith’s, easing them apart and deftly holding them there. To the sounds of Hunk cooing audibly and Pidge giggling, Lance gently pulls Keith from the bench and into the crowd. For a moment the return to pressing bodies and constant conversations right in his ear overwhelms Keith, yet Lance’s hand is warm in his, squeezing reassuringly whenever Keith tenses. Every time, Keith feels a flood of gratitude towards whatever force or otherworldly power put Lance in his life.

“You want to leave?” asks Lance when there’s a break in the crowd and they can walk side by side comfortably.

Keith quickly shakes his head. “No, I—no. I’m fine, really.”

“Is it too loud?” Lance’s thumb brushes over the back of Keith’s hand. “The crowd?”

“I really am fine,” insists Keith, his mouth twitching wryly. Lance’s concern is endearing. “I just started...thinking.”

Lance blinks, then tuts. “You should know by now how dangerous _thinking_ is for you, Keith. Honestly.”

“Shut it,” huffs Keith.

Lance grins at him, but the curve starts to fall. “I’m serious, though. Whenever it gets too much, we can go. If you—” Lance hesitates for a brief second, slowing to a stop and looking down. “If you want to talk about it, even, that’s fine.”

“Fireworks,” says Keith.

Lance looks up. “What?”

“Fireworks,” repeats Keith with a slight smile. “I was thinking of… when I went to see fireworks with Shiro—with my brother.”

“Oh.” Lance’s expression grows apprehensive. “Your brother, um, is he—? I mean, I don’t want to pry, I just… you mentioned him before. When we were… arguing.”

Someone jostles Keith as they pass by. Keith pulls Lance out of the way of the milling crowd to stand beside a fountain. Coins and confetti gleam in the water, and several children are feeding the pigeons gathering there.

“He’s not dead,” says Keith, watching the quick waddle of a bird chasing bread crusts. “He’s… sleeping. Has been for months.”

“Oh. Demons.”

“Yeah. We’d just moved to the city. It used to be just us for awhile, so suddenly not having him around… Yeah, I—yeah.” Keith ducks his head with a rueful laugh. “Well, you know where I ended up.”

“On a bridge in the middle of the night,” says Lance bluntly.

Keith huffs. “The way you say it makes it sound worse than it was.”

When he looks up, the sun is a bright halo around Lance’s head, accentuating the ruddy tint in his hair, the freckles on his nose and cheeks, the warmth of his smile.

“It _was_ a bit of an ominous way to meet,” says Lance.

“Can’t argue that.”

The silence that follows is comfortable; Keith feels as though he’s let go of something, or pushed a heavy blanket off his feet. There are two pigeons fighting over the same piece of bread, three young women stand at the fountain to flick in three shiny dimes, and Lance’s hand fits in Keith’s so perfectly he wonders what it ever felt like not to have it there.

“Y’know,” says Lance after awhile, “hospital rooms are pretty dull, right?”

Keith doesn’t have to mull it over. “Incredibly.”

“Then, why not decorate it a bit?” Lance points with his free hand to a booth across the way. It’s decked out colourfully, and a number of small windmills on sticks turn in the unsteady breeze. “Brighten it up. Who needs flowers when you’ve got turny-thingies, right?”

“That’s…” Keith trails off. “Huh. That wouldn’t be so bad.”

“What’s Shiro’s favourite colour?” asks Lance as he makes a beeline for the stall, Keith coming along for the ride.

“Uh, black?”

Lance pauses and shoots Keith an unimpressed look. “We are _not_ putting black turny-thingies beside your brother’s bed.”

“Windmills,” corrects Keith, and he grins. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind a splash of pink.”

“ _That’s_ better.”

When they return to the others where they’ve succumbed to the temptations of funnel cake, no one has words for the metallic pink windmill tucked behind Lance’s ear, or the glittery one that Keith idly waves through the air.  Pidge nearly snorts out ice cream and Shay hides her giggles behind a hand, but her crinkled eyes are locked on Hunk’s smiling face. Keith finds himself smiling as well, warmed by the comfortable atmosphere between them. He lets his gaze slide over to Lance, wearing a similarly fond expression. For a moment, Keith is overcome by a bubbling well of appreciation for these people. It’s been awhile since he could consider it, but Keith knows these people, these friends, are special to him. So caught up is he that he doesn’t fully register the pressure on his shoulder when a gloved hand descends there.

“Akira, huh?” a hushed voice says calmly in Keith’s ear. “You thought you could walk away?”

The timbre is familiar.

“Turn your back and everything would be as normal?” the voice continues, hot puffs of air warming the side of Keith’s face.

He blinks, slowly, as if drenched in honey. Something’s very wrong. No power should work on him, and Keith’s heart kicks into gear and jackhammers at his ribcage. His body remembers this voice, but his brain struggles to catch up.

Keith begins to turn his head, eyes sliding over to meet a single bloodshot eye. Teeth, filed into points, bare in a smile. “Fool.”

“Keith, who’s your fr–?”

Whatever Lance is asking is cut short by the crack of a gunshot splitting the air – _once, twice_ – and the choked sound Pidge makes, a confused yelp from Hunk, Shay’s startled gasp.

Wet roses bloom upon the floating green material of Shay’s shirt. She looks down, frowning in pain and confusion at the twin red blossoms on her chest, unfurling petals that cling to the cotton, growing larger and larger.

The demon claps Keith on the shoulder. Abruptly Keith’s movement returns, and he turns his back on the symphony of screams and cries surrounding Shay’s falling body. That familiar hulking form is already becoming one with the crowd, but that bloody eye is bright and locked on Keith as the demon slips away.

The dark maw of Keith’s rage envelopes him until all he sees is red.

* * *

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow i sure hope there aren't any typos :'))

His breath is rasping in his throat before he even reaches the corner of the block. The demon is long gone, but the threat is still there. With one hand, Keith fumbles in his pocket to draw out his phone. The lock screen feels like it doesn’t belong to him; the cheerful smiles, the naïvety, the eyes so clueless Keith could weep. If only he could go back in time and warn them all.

Prayers and wishes would get him nowhere. It takes more time bringing up Allura’s contact information than usually required, given that he’s unwilling to sacrifice speed for accuracy. He remembers belatedly the windmill churning desperately in his hand—it takes him more effort than he cares to admit to throw it away.

When he finally manages to call Allura, every ring is another tick in a countdown that ends in the destruction of everything he’d—of everything they’d—

“ _Hello, Allura spea—”_

“Shiro,” gasps Keith.

“ _Pardon? Who—?”_

“Protect Shiro,” snarls Keith with more vehemence than necessary. “He’s targeted—keep him safe—from demons.”

Since when has the air been so _hot?_ It’s boiling in his lungs.

“ _I don’t follow_ ,” says Allura.

Keith knows she’s lying. “Close down—the ward—until I call back—” The thought crosses his mind that he may never call back. His throat tightens, but his next exhale blows it open roughly.

“ _Keith—”_ begins Allura tightly.

“Protect him!” shouts Keith, and then he’s hanging up, sliding his phone into his pocket, and leaning forward for speed.

The elevator at his apartment building takes too long. He sprints his way to his floor, nearly shouldering the door down when the key doesn’t click immediately. Despite having an entire week to do it, he still hadn’t fully unpacked his bag—and there it lies, just inside the threshold to his room. It’s unzipped and missing a few items he needed since the week started, so he begins shoving things back inside.

_Identification, cash, cards, knife_ —he lists off all he needs as he grabs things off the starkly decorated furniture. It’s when he registers his phone buzzing in his pocket that Keith is forced to stop. Consider his options. Refocus.

The demon—the glowing eye, the one who haunted his dreams for months—found him. Not only that, but nearly everyone Keith has grown to care about was standing _right there_.

_Shay_.

Keith chokes on his breath. The air is thick, like honey, as if the demon is standing behind him, gloved hand drifting through the air so casually, so lightly—

He spins around, knocking himself off-balance, but the room is empty save for Keith.

_He’s not here_ , Keith reminds himself, but the possibilities start spilling forth. The demon waiting in Hunk and Lance’s apartment, walking freely into the library, smiling.

Terror envelopes Keith faster than his anger. He can’t grab his things and run and fight from the shadows—not anymore. Now there are other people—Hunk, Pidge, _Lance_ —that might very well end up just like Shay. The demons already know his weaknesses, and shooting Shay had been a test, his reaction their conclusion. They won’t come for Keith, but for everyone he cares about.

The straps are rough against Keith’s palm as he squeezes them. His only plan of action is a familiar one.

 

* * *

 

 

Thankfully Keith has the state of mind to take public transit the bulk of the distance to the bar. It’s strange that life is continuing on in the city, when Keith feels as though his own is falling to pieces, fingers desperately trying to keep the edges flush together.

The bar is a block away from the stop. Keith doesn’t attempt to hide his presence—he doubts the boss will be here. No, the reason he came is for information, and there are no patrons in the bar at this hour when Keith throws open the door. The bartender jolts at the suddenness of his entrance, takes one look at Keith’s expression, and lunges for something at the far end of the bar.

Even with his backpack on, Keith is faster. He tangles his fingers in the bartender’s hair and smashes his face off the counter. The surface will have to be polished again—a pity. Keith grabs a hold of the bartender’s collar and drags him over the counter to sprawl at his feet. The man is dazed. Keith doesn’t have time for that.

“Where is he?” snarls Keith as he looms over the man.

He receives only a blank stare and bobbing eyelids. Once again he grabs the bartender by his rumpled collar and hauls him up to thrust against the bar. Keith’s empty hand slides back to his bag, taking his knife out of the side pocket. The bartender stares at the blade that flicks open and reflects the dim incandescent bulbs.

“Where,” repeats Keith with false calm, “is he?”

The bartender’s gaze finally seems to focus on him. His Adam’s apple bobs. _Good_ ; he’s nervous.

“You don’t know who you’re fucking with,” says the man. “Sendak doesn’t take kindly to rats like you.”

Keith’s answering grimace grinds his teeth together. _Sendak_. The name is like vinegar inside Keith’s mouth. “I know _exactly_ who I’m fucking with. Where is he?”

The bartender makes the mistake of hesitating; Keith presses the flat of his blade against the thin skin of his throat.

“Where?” he repeats.

 

* * *

 

 

As vital as it is, Keith ends up leaving his backpack inside a coffee shop with the assumption that someone will leave it behind the counter. If he makes it back— _when_ he makes it back—he’ll pick it up then. The knife stays on him.

The bartender told him about a warehouse near the other end of the city. Keith knows nothing of what sort of goods are being stored there, waiting for transport, but it isn’t the merchandise he’s concerned with. Somehow, months of chasing a shadow of a demon has bloomed into a clear trail reeking with corruption. There’s no turning back. Keith feels nauseous.

At the corner of the block, Keith halts to take stock of the situation. In the parking lot are half a dozen vehicles. The building itself is standard as they come, with the majority of the windows on the ground floor. A handful of others indicate two more floors on the south end. Office space, he guesses.

There’s too much open ground between himself and the warehouse. They’ll spot him for sure— _especially_ if they know he’s coming. If Sendak is here, it means he lured Keith in. If Sendak _isn’t_ , then there must be someone who knows his location. Either way, Keith knows there’ll be blood on his hands.

_Let them be soaked_.

He slides a hand back to check where his sheathed knife sits on his belt, hidden by the hem of his shirt. The handle doesn’t feel cold in his hand. It’s just a puny weapon. Even with powers at Sendak’s disposal, Keith imagines he packs a lot of firepower. What’s a knife against a gun?

_Enough,_ if Keith is quick. It’ll be enough.

Suddenly he hears footsteps—running, approaching fast from behind. Keith tenses and whips around, drawing his knife in one fluid motion. He freezes.

Skidding to a stop, chest heaving, is Lance. His hands are spread as if to placate Keith, who belatedly realizes the knife he’s got pointed at him. Quickly, Keith sheathes it once more.

“What are you _doing_ here?” he hisses.

Lance’s face is a red and sweaty mess. “Stopping you from making a mistake.”

Keith’s anger flares. “Leave.”

“No.”

“You—” Keith’s teeth grind together. Lance’s obstinance is going to take time to waylay—wait. Keith’s brow furrows. “How...did you know where I was?”

The red begins to fade from Lance’s face. “I had a feeling.”

“A feeling.” Something sits wrong in Keith’s gut. A twinge of discomfort, of—of _unease_. No, that doesn’t belong there, not because of Lance. “You...had a feeling.”

Keith doesn’t know what expression he’s making, so caught up in his growing anxiety, but Lance sees it. Lance’s face twists slightly as if in pain—as if holding back.

As if lying.

No, Keith doesn’t know what expression he’s making, but it must not be good.

“How did you know, Lance?” asks Keith quietly.

Lance’s Adam’s apple bobs. Nervous. Keith takes a half step back. Lance looks as though he’s been punched.

“I—I’ve been here before,” says Lance after a moment. The corner of his mouth pinches to keep his lip from trembling. It doesn’t entirely work. “I used to work here. With Rolo. I thought…”

His next words die in his throat. His eyes are wide.

“Keith—” he begins.

“No,” rasps Keith. “You worked for Sendak—for a demon. You knew.”

“I—”

“You knew who he was.” Keith’s breath hitches in his throat. It’s painful. “You knew. You _knew_.”

“ _Listen to me!”_

Keith stares at Lance. The knife on his belt is begging to be drawn once more, but at the same time his hand refuses to go near it. Part of him is terrified of Lance; another is terrified _for_ him. Keith isn’t sure what he might do.

Lance stands tall, hands curled into fists at his sides. “Keith. I’m not your enemy.”

_Liar._

“I’m not lying.”

Keith flinches.

“I worked there,” says Lance, “but I never saw or spoke to Sendak. I’ve only heard rumours—a man with a bloody eye, who can alter your perception, the world around you. I knew he was bad, but at the time I…I thought I might as well belong there.” Lance’s gaze flicks down briefly, but he drags it back up to meet Keith’s stubbornly. “We just did manual labour, nothing more, lifting and inventory and construction.”

“You were at the bar,” says Keith, recalling pain and awe. “That day.”

Lance grimaces. “I was a runner, sometimes. Rarely! They wouldn't trust a grunt with anything important, but— I swear. I didn't get involved. Not...not really.”

The silence following his explanation stretches between them. Keith still feels the residual urge to fight, but the logical part of him is warring with his anger. If what Lance says is true—no, it has to be. Lance would have recognized Sendak right away if he was lying. Shay wouldn’t have been shot, and Lance wouldn’t put his friends in danger. A person who steps in on a stranger’s fight wouldn’t do that.

It’s perturbing, knowing just where Lance had been the whole time. Yet Keith knew—everyone knew—that he wasn’t in the best of places. Keith should have seen this coming. He should have asked, but maybe he didn’t really want to know, just like he didn’t want anyone else to know where he himself was.

The fact remains, however, that in spite of this, Keith knows him still. This new information doesn’t change the person Lance was when Keith met him, nor the person he became in the time since.

Inhaling deeply and forcing some resemblance of calm over himself, Keith says, “Go home, Lance.”

“No,” says Lance immediately. “I swear to you, I’m not a—”

“I know,” interrupts Keith, and in an effort to soothe himself, he adds, “I believe you.”

Lance’s face screws up in confused indignance. “Then why are you telling me to leave?”

“I’m not letting you waltz into a demon-infested warehouse.” Unease prickles the back of Keith’s neck. “Sendak may not recognize you as an employee, but others might. I’m not willing to put you at risk.”

“Like I’ll let _you_ go in alone,” scoffs Lance. “Say what you want, I’m not going anywhere but in there.”

“You’re only going to get hurt—”

“I’m not leaving,” says Lance with finality. His gaze is burning; Keith finds he can’t look away. “I can’t forgive what he’s done. I won’t let someone else important to me get hurt if I can help it.”

Not for the first time, Keith curses Lance’s stubbornness, but he’s wasting precious time.

“Fine,” he says. “Do what you want.”

He turns his back on Lance, who says nothing, but Keith can feel the victory at his back. The warehouse is ahead of them. Eyes locked forward, Keith makes sure his knife is hidden and then begins crossing the road. Running would only draw more attention to themselves. Lance falls into step beside him, hands shoved into his pockets leisurely. Keith tries to keep his attention on the task at hand, but red roses keep blooming in his head. He almost doesn’t want to know. Add that to the list, he supposes.

“Shay,” says Keith as they approach the parking lot. “Is she…?”

What might he do if she’s dead?

“We called 911,” says Lance lowly. “After that… I don’t know.”

Keith breathes in deeply. “Okay.”

He can’t afford to linger on it for long. She’ll either live or die, and nothing he does now can change that. It aches something fierce in his chest, in a space he didn’t think could possibly feel anything more than it has recently. The cons of caring, apparently.

They approach the building, keeping to nondescript areas less likely to be picked up on camera. There’s no way to go completely undetected, unless Keith wanted to spend a week scoping out the area. He doesn’t have time for that.

There’s a glass door plastered with work safety reminders. Keith enters first, waiting on the threshold for his eyes to adjust to the different lighting. It’s the open area of the warehouse—all skids stacked with boxes and crates, some only coming up to his hip, and others three times his height. The far half is dedicated to shelves of more crates, forklifts sitting dormant at their base. It’s like a maze; plenty of places to hide.

And it’s quiet, nearly silent but for the hum of the ventilation system. Somehow, Keith is even more on edge than before. He adjusts his weight as he walks, prepared to react at a split second’s notice should someone pop out from around one of the many hiding spots.

They make it across the warehouse uncontested. There’s a window looking into what is presumably the security room, monitors stacked up and facing away from any nosy outsiders. Keith reaches for the door leading into the hallway adjacent, and that’s when he hears Lance gasp.

“I can’t see,” he breathes before his knees give a shudder beneath him.

Keith doesn’t watch him buckle—his own body is leaping back from the door just as it bursts open. He dodges the first swipe, a blade cutting through the air harmlessly, and sidesteps the second. The demon is middle-aged with a paunch, but enough enthusiasm to make up for his obvious lack of skill. Keith twists his arm until he drops the knife, and throws him over his hip. The demon hits the ground with a thud and a groan. Lance scrambles to his feet, breathing unevenly. He glares down at the man.

“You’re not very good with a knife, you know that?” says Lance. “You should just give up trying to fight.”

The demon looks dazedly up at him. Lance’s face screws up, obviously thinking hard.

“You left the stove on at home! There was a weird smell as you left—you remember that don’t you?” The demon is rising to his feet, suddenly looking concerned as Lance continues, “Do you even have insurance? You gotta run home and turn it off!”

And just like that, the demon mutters “Oh damn” and jogs out of the warehouse.

“You’re sure chatty,” says Keith.

Lance scoffs. “D’you think he _wants_ to ditch the fight and run home? I’ve got to be convincing.”

“Your definition of convincing is a lot different than mine.”

The door to the security room is open a crack. Keith enters first, bursting in with the intention of surprising anyone hiding out, but it’s empty. Half a dozen black screens perch atop the desk. Trails have been traced through the dust by idle fingers. Lance moves around Keith to press a knuckle into the monitors’ power button.

“Why did they leave this dumbass here?” he mutters as the screens start flickering to life.

Two of the screens remain dead. Keith’s eyes dart to the first sign of movement: second floor, a familiar man in a tailored suit, approaching the camera with a baseball bat in hand.

“Oh, I see,” says Lance as the screen goes black. “Couldn’t they have just disconnected the power or something? What’s with the dramatics? And _why_ the bat?”

“Couldn’t tell you,” says Keith, peering in closely at the remaining screens. Nobody seems to be on the third floor yet, although Suits appears in the stairwell and clubs that camera out as well. Then it’s just the parking lot of the warehouse and the third floor hall that’s left.

“Bad news.” Keith straightens to look at Lance, who shakes his phone at him with a resigned expression. “No cell reception.”

Keith blinks slowly. He didn’t even think to check—he had no intention of calling anyone once he entered the building.

“You should go outs—”

“Not leaving you,” interrupts Lance, wrinkling his nose. “Stop trying. What kind of building doesn’t have reception, anyway?”

Keith almost sighs. “Right. Here’s the plan: if Sendak is here, he’ll be in a central location surrounded by his demons. We meet a demon, we’re probably getting close.”

“Explain how this is a plan, again?”

“I’ll take out all the demons—”

“Um, okay, Juggernaut.”

“—and you make sure they don’t come back once we pass them.”

Lance gives him a look that’s resolutely unimpressed. “How haven’t you died yet? Honestly.”

“Less snark, more helping,” says Keith, looking back to see that the third floor camera is out of commission.

“Sendak’s office is on the third floor, dead center. There’s private access on the other side or something. I’ve never seen it but I’ve also never seen him enter or leave, and we always knew when he was around, so.”

Keith turns to stare at Lance, who shrugs with some discomfort.

“Perks of creeping around with an ex-employee?” he offers.

“Right.” After a brief hesitation, Keith pats him brusquely on the shoulder. It’s awkward, and he worries he comes across as cold, but Lance quirks a wry grin.

They leave the security room. Sendak having a way in and out—a private escape route—doesn’t bode well, although knowing the exact room he _could_ be cuts down their searching time. Even if Sendak isn’t inside the building, there should be some sort of clue leading elsewhere. Keith doesn’t care how convoluted it might get.

They reach the stairwell as someone comes bursting out, a wild grin on his face and long hair sticking to his bared teeth. Keith slides under his leading arm, ignoring the dance of sparks on his fingertips that die on contact. With a twist and a tug, the demon is belly-up on the floor, Lance dancing out of the way of flailing limbs.

“Alright,” huffs Keith, “do your thing.”

Lance steps in to hover over the dazed demon. “Hey man, you hungry? You hear that gurgle in your belly? I think you are. You should get a bagel. Poppyseed, toasted—”

“A bagel, Lance? Seriously?”

“Shut up! I’m under a lot of pressure here.”

“A bagel,” mutters Keith.

“You seem hungry, and a bagel is a great idea, take it from a fan. Closest café is four blocks away, so you’d better get going, yeah? Yeah, there’s a good demon. Y’know,” says Lance as the man staggers into the hallway rubbing his stomach, “this kind of feels like fighting mooks in the boss castle. Stationed seemingly at random, popping out at us, getting their asses beat. You’re not feeling that?”

“Kind of preoccupied,” says Keith, leading the way up the stairs. He lowers his voice when it echoes back to him. “Stay behind me.”

“I sure as hell ain’t leading,” mumbles Lance just before there’s the sound of a door slamming open. They both freeze.

“Shitty, shitty, shitty little kids an’ they’re shitty powers an’—”

Multiple footsteps come from the hallway. Keith exchanges a glance with Lance before taking the stairs two at a time. He wants to go straight for the third floor, but the idea of gathering all the demons in one place is slightly frightening. Only slightly. Instead he opts to cut off those coming up now.

The second floor is empty but for the debris of a ruined camera. Keith starts forward to check the rooms for other camping demons when he feels a shudder up his leg. Lance makes a confused sound.

Keith reacts to the tremors before he fully realizes what he’s doing. The floor sags beneath his feet like soft bread, forcing him to leap towards the wall. He forgets to call out a warning to Lance. Keith spins around to see him pitching forward, eyes wide, hands flung out to brace for his fall. The floor crumbles beneath him.

“Keith—!” yelps Lance, hands scrambling for purchase that tears away like crumbs.

Forgetting the unstable floor beneath him, Keith lunges for Lance’s arms. Keith’s palms are sweaty; it’s difficult to get a grip on Lance’s wrist. With a growl, Keith tightens his fingers and pulls, regardless of the soft floor caving inwards. He just needs to get Lance up, pull him closer to the walls, get inside some other room—

Lance screams. His nails are suddenly digging into Keith’s wrists, biting deep.

Someone is crowing delightedly from below, “Lookie, lookie! I got ‘im!”

Lance’s breath cuts short, sucks in sharply. Keith doesn’t take the time to aim; he frees one hand from Lance with a yank, pulls out his knife and whips it into the decaying hole. There’s a snarl and abruptly Lance is lighter.

“ _Now!”_ gasps Lance, and Keith yanks.

Lance comes flying up, folding into Keith’s arms before either of them can get their balance. The demon is shouting something. The floor only starts deteriorating faster. Keith’s knee hits linoleum but he pushes against it, hands twisting in the fabric of Lance’s shirt as he pulls him along, putting distance between themselves and the rot.

Keith stops in the midst of hauling Lance to his feet. There, beyond the floor rot, a man in a suit. As Keith watches, the demon lifts one hand, palming his slicked hair back. Then he smiles and the lights go out.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sry im so SLOW :3c if it's not obvious i was uhhh writing uuuuhh other things heh anyway
> 
> tfw u go through character development and then shit happens and you instantly regress what a mood
> 
> these demons are literally doing everything the hard way just for funsies im not even jokin. bc like. honestly if i was in a position of power i would also be super dramatic like WHO’S GONNA TAKE ME DOWN?? NOT THESE KIDS.


	11. Chapter 11

“This is bad,” gasps Lance.

Keith says nothing; his silence is agreement enough. He dragged Lance into the closest room—office space, four desks with all that included, from computer monitors to family photos. The only light is coming in through the windows. The locked door would only hold for so long. Seconds, probably.

That wouldn’t be an apocalyptic issue if it wasn’t for the state of Lance’s leg. _Mangled_ is the word Keith might use. Keith isn’t sure who caught him, but he wouldn’t be surprised had it been the same one that wrecked the floor. The furrows in Keith’s arm from Lance’s nails still sting something fierce. If it was himself, Keith might consider jumping out the window. With Lance? He won’t be able to escape the room, much less traverse the staircases of the building with any speed.

Frankly, he feels like an idiot. How many times will he put the people he cares about in danger before he learns anything? How can he say he’s doing this to protect them when all it does is dig them all deeper? Forget Sendak—Keith just wants to get Lance to safety. If that means dragging everyone he loves into a safehouse for an undetermined period of time while _god damn professionals_ do their job, so be it.

With his knife out of commission, Keith starts looking around for something he can use as a weapon. Probably not an entire chair, and a keyboard would have little impact. Telephone wire would only work as a garrote if he could surprise the last demon through the door from behind. Probability of success? Null.

“I have an idea,” says Lance quietly.

Keith’s eyes land on a photocopier. Beside it, a paper cutter. “Yeah?”

“You, out the window. I’ll persuade these guys to fuck off.”

“Terrible plan,” says Keith.

“It’s all we’ve got.”

“Not quite.” The blade of the paper cutter can’t be that sharp, but it’ll have to do. Keith wraps his fingers around the handle.

“You—” Lance cuts off as Keith starts working the blade off with sheer force. “...Don’t you dare, Keith. _Keith_. I’m telling you to _go."_

“No,” says Keith blithely. He looks back at Lance, at the mangled mess that is Lance’s leg. “You can’t protect yourself.”

“ _Yes_ , I _can_ ,” insists Lance, face twisted in a scowl. “It’s only a couple demons. I can take them out if I speak first—”

“You know it won’t work like that.” Keith’s voice is cold; he forces the chill in it. He may not have the persuasion that Lance does, but he can curb any argument by tone alone.

It doesn’t stop Lance from trying. “I can,” he says, voice cracking, but whether from pain or desperation Keith doesn’t know. “What can you do? Nothing! You’re just a human against these guys.”

“They can’t use their powers on me. I stand a better chance than you do.”

“ _No_ ,” breathes Lance, and he’s staggering on one leg to grab Keith’s arms in a steel grip. “They’ll be killing two people instead of just one if you stay. Keith—”

“You admit it then,” snaps Keith. Anger burns alongside the cold fear in his chest. “You don’t get to decide who lives and dies, Lance. You’re not—not some _god_. You’re powerless, and I’m not going to leave you.”

Lance blinks rapidly, and then there are tears tracing salty tracks through the crusted blood and dirt on his cheeks. His face crumples in frustration, desperation and fear. Trembling fingers dig into the meat of Keith’s arms. It hurts, but not as bad as the squeezing in Keith’s chest at the mere thought of leaving Lance behind. He wouldn’t. Not ever.

“Don’t,” whispers Lance hoarsely. “You can’t die.”

Keith lifts a hand to smudge the grime across Lance’s cheekbone. It only makes it worse, but neither of them are in any state to care. There are demons hunting them, after all, and right now they’re playing the role of paralyzed rabbits.

“I have no intention of dying,” says Keith, as much trying to reassure Lance as himself. Selfishly, he wants to protect Lance, but he also doesn’t want to die. Not yet.

Lance’s breath shudders as Keith stands, wrenching his arms from his grip. Keith turns back to work off the blade with brute force and holds it as he would a machete. Something crunches out in the hallway. Lance’s sobs become muffled by his own fist in his mouth.

Keith readies himself beside the door. Lance vanishes behind one of the desks.

One makeshift blade against demons with powers whose limits are unknown to him? No problem.

 

* * *

 

 

The entire door plus some of the surrounding wall crumbles. Keith can’t say he’s surprised. The instant a hand appears through the rot, the blade descends. He feels flesh and bone give under the force, but the paper cutter isn’t made for cleaving through limbs. The demon shrieks and backpedals with his fractured wrist. Keith makes to follow into the blackness of the hallway, but there’s a sound like a propane stove trying to catch fire. When Keith places the sound, it’s too late.

With a crack and a boom, the injured demon is thrust into Keith in a blast of heat. Keith meets the surface of a desk, choking on a breath he can’t take as he and the demon roll off it. The acrid smell of burnt hair and cloth—too familiar, _don’t think about it_ —fills Keith’s nostrils, the weight of the demon on top of him claustrophobic.

He shoves himself free, cold panic seizing his spine as Keith tries to find a point of advantage. There’s a laugh as he uses a desk to haul himself to his feet. The lights flicker on. It sears Keith’s eyes as he scrambles until his back hits the window.

“You really are a pain in the ass,” sighs a demon as Keith’s eyes focus on the two stepping into the room.

One is a tall woman, hair in a black plait, her hands and arms sparking sporadically. The one who’d spoken is the suited demon, grimacing at the mess his companion has made currently smoldering on the floor.

“I’d rather not kill you,” says Suits idly, “especially with a power like that. Well, we can just blow your legs off and wait for Haxus to get here, I guess. Remember not to touch him,” he adds with a wave of his hand towards the woman.

She steps forward with smoking hands while Suits casts his gaze around the room. Keith feels behind him for something, _anything,_ but all he’s got an abundance of is windowsill and glass. Hand to hand it is.

“Where’s the broken one—?” begins Suits when suddenly Lance appears behind him, swinging a chair over his head.

With a crash, Suits hits the ground. The other demon whips around, a hand already flying out in a burst of fire that turns the chair Lance had lifted to protect himself into melted plastic. The woman is spinning back around when Keith’s heel connects with her skull. She drops like a rock, her head banging off the edge of a desk.

“Nice,” says Lance, letting go of the smoking remains of his unconventional weapon.

“Yep, time to go,” breathes Keith as he jumps over the fallen demons to Lance’s side.

They leave through the gaping wall, Keith supporting Lance’s weight as they move as fast as they can to the stairs. Keith enters first, ears straining to catch a sound, whether it be a footstep or a murmur. Nothing but Lance trying to keep quiet, breathless and in pain.

Then Keith feels it, oozing thick and heavy from above.

“Keith,” whispers Lance. “You won’t win.”

The smothering presence is descending on them steadily, turning the tension in Keith’s body to mud. No, he’s well aware he could never win. Not like he is now, all anger and fear bundled into one adrenaline-fueled body. Not with Lance hanging off his shoulder, his body feverishly hot but his hand icy in Keith’s.

“We’re getting out of here,” says Keith, as if knowing Sendak is above him isn’t suffocating, as if he’s confident they’ll be able to escape intact in the first place.

They go downstairs, furrowing a path through the remains of the second floor. They pass the control room, into the main warehouse, going slower when Lance’s dragging steps echo. Keith leads him between the skids stacked high with crates. The echoing is less noticeable here. It’s a bit more time consuming, taking the indirect route, but they eventually reach the exit.

Or what _should_ be the exit, except that it’s missing. Keith looks left and right. Lance looks left and right. Together, they look up.

“This is stupid,” says Lance, staring at the door perched twelve feet up from where it should be.

Keith agrees, but that doesn’t stop the anxiety scratching at the bottom of his heart. Carefully, he takes Lance’s arm from around his shoulders, helping him lean against a stack. The door is still too high even if they could climb onto the skids, and Keith isn’t familiar with the layout of the building. There should be another door, but…

Footsteps. They’re not alone in the warehouse.

Lance is looking at him with something like resignation, as if he already knows what Keith is planning. He probably does. No, he definitely does. Lance reaches for him, but Keith moves faster.

He takes Lance’s face in his hands and kisses him, hard and brief, like he’s some kind of action hero about to dive into the fray. Well, that isn’t wrong either, though he might argue that _hero_ never really felt right.

“Find a way out,” he breathes against Lance’s lips.

Lance catches his hands before Keith can let go. His gaze is steady when he says, “You too.”

This time, Keith doesn’t promise.

 

* * *

 

 

Standing at the end of an aisle, Keith finds his first demon. He knows who it is before the man even turns around. It’s as though Keith’s nightmares are coming alive to punish him, but he doesn’t mind. Not really. It might be the only opportunity he has to lay them to rest.

A thin smile slashes across Haxus’ pointy face when he meets Keith’s gaze a dozen yards away. No distance is far enough to keep the prickling from Keith’s neck.

“Sendak was hoping you’d come for a chat,” says Haxus, as if Keith and Lance hadn’t just been running around wrecking his underlings’ shit.

Keith tacks on a patronizing grin. “I’m not feeling chatty.”

He rushes in first, knowing his power is a hot commodity they’ll refrain killing him for. Haxus rolls his eyes.

“Try not to destroy the merchandise,” he says calmly.

_Click click._

Keith doesn’t even get halfway before he’s thrown sideways by a sudden explosion. He hits a metal shelf back-first, exhaling sharply just before impact. Smoke forms a haze in front of his eyes, chunks of wood and some other material clattering to the concrete floor.

“I said _not_ destroy it, you overzealous fool,” sighs Haxus exasperatedly as the demon with the braid climbs through the gap she’d made in the opposite shelf.

Keith is on his feet and running before she can land a direct hit. His muscles feel like elastic bands stretched too far, but he forces himself to keep running, keep moving, shooting right past Haxus with his arched eyebrows.

The stacked skids give Keith plenty of places to hide. He weaves between them, all his senses on high alert. He makes a sharp turn and sees the whisk of Braids’ telltale hair, backpedals and keeps moving. When he realizes he’s heading too close to where he left Lance, Keith spins around in the opposite direction, a stitch developing in his side.

There’s a flash of movement from the corner of his eye—Keith looks up in time to see Braids dropping from a stack of crates. He dives as her palm flies out. Heat from the near-miss prickles at Keith’s neck, his ears throbbing from the explosion. The demon spits a curse; Keith rolls to his feet and pushes on even as a crate explodes at his heels.

Unfortunately, she’s fast, and Keith’s body is screaming from the exertion. _Rest, damn it_ , cries his legs. He makes the executive decision not to acquiesce.

Several more crates turn to clouds of splinters and packaging as Keith leads the demon through the warehouse, unable to formulate any sort of plan beyond _run_. Suddenly one of the crates bursts into flames, the lid popping off it with deep boom. He hears Haxus’ sharp voice telling Braids to stop lighting up the goods. Keith almost grins.

Until there’s a glint in his periphery and he’s too slow to completely dodge the swipe of a blade. With a hiss, Keith whirls in time to miss another slash. His shoulder burns, his shirt sticking to torn skin. Strolling after him, waving the paper-cutter blade like a greeting, Suits smiles.

Keith really wishes they would stay down for just a bit longer.

Slowing down beside him, Braids shoots Suits a scowl, her chest heaving from the chase. “Watch that thing.”

“What thing?” Suits flips the blade in one hand, nearly nicking Braids’ nose. Sparks pop at her hands and Suits snorts.

Keith bolts once more.

It’s a lot more difficult outrunning two demons; Braids keeps running him where she wants, whereas Suits cuts him off at a leisurely stroll. Too quickly, Keith has a collection of burns and cuts where he couldn’t dodge fast enough, or had to make a block to avoid an explosion.

He’s in a bad way—he knows it, the demons know it. It’s only a matter of time. His muscles are on fire with lactic acid, his nerves frayed and dull. Fuzzy whiteness encroaches on the edges of his vision. His head pulses.

The only thing Keith can hope for is that Lance made it out and he wouldn’t be foolish enough to come hobbling back in.

The next time Braids attacks, Keith doesn’t see it coming, nor does he react. Her hand blasts through the corner of a crate—Keith feels the splinters in his exposed skin—and catches him in the side. A wall of plastic-wrapped skids greets his shoulder and his head. The floor rumbles beneath him, but he hears nothing except the high pitched ringing in his head like an alarm.

He fancies he hears Haxus cursing up a storm.

Something is sprinkling on Keith from above. He blinks sawdust from his eyes, forces himself to sit up despite the pressure wrapping steadily around his skull. Something is on fire—one of the crates?—but that’s not important compared to the chunks of wood clattering to the concrete floor. There’s a groaning sound, like two heavy pieces of metal pushing against each other.

“—you _idiot_ ,” Haxus is snarling.

The air is thick with quickly settling dust, but it doesn’t hide Keith from the three demons as they turn their attention on him. Haxus looks furious—he’s not up for games anymore.

Braids steps forward, half her face red and raw, like she’d burned herself. Her eyes are on Keith, blaming him. He croaks a laugh.

“Bad day?” he says, hoarse around a heavy tongue.

If it was possible, her eyes surely would’ve sparked as her palms do.

“Wait,” snaps Haxus. “We need his power. Knock him out, break him, whatever. Don’t kill him.”

Suits shakes bits of crate from his hair. “I’ve got it,” he says, then shoots Braids a look. “Try not to blow anything else important up.”

She bares her teeth, but steps back. Keith pushes himself up against the crates with his palms, but they slide out from under him, slick with blood.

“Bad day?” echoes Suits with a smile, closing the few yards between himself and Keith.

“No—”

Everyone freezes—well, that’s a lie. They all turn and _then_ freeze, staring. Lance gapes at them, braced against a forklift with a hand halfway to his mouth as if to shut himself up.

Keith is the first to regain his composure. “Run, you idiot—!”

The blunt edge of the paper-cutter strikes his cheekbone with a crack. Keith forgets how to breath as bolts of pain lance through his head. The alarms ring louder. So does the groaning.

“ _No!”_ shouts Lance, taking a step forward. “Don’t touch him—don’t hurt him!”

“Don’t let the boy talk anymore,” snaps Haxus.

“Lance,” croaks Keith. “Run.”

Suits turns away from Keith. Only Braids is looking at him, but the floor is whirling under Keith like he’s had five too many drinks. Some sound escapes him. The air pops like a gas stove lighting up. Her vengeful gaze drops to Keith’s knees. So they really weren’t kidding about taking his legs.

“ _STOP!”_

Braids blinks, her rising hands slowing to pause in midair. The air isn’t popping ominously anymore. Keith’s shoulder nudges a crate and he uses it as a support to sit upright. The entire world is spinning with Keith at its center, and meanwhile there’s three demons, two of whom are converging on Lance—or at least, they were.

Lance doesn’t look away as he says, “ _Kneel._ ”

All three take a knee at once.

Keith feels his legs twitch to obey. That sparks a realization, that it isn’t him the world is orbiting anymore—it’s Lance.

Expression terrifying in his fury, Lance looms over the demons, whose heads are bowing as though invisible hands are pushing them down. His mouth opens. Keith doesn’t know this voice.

“ _You_.”

Suits’ head lifts an inch.

“ _You._ ”

Braids turns slightly.

The air isn’t thick or golden, but Lance’s voice is. It burns inside Keith’s head, a molten whisper demanding he _listen_.

 _This_ , thinks Keith, _isn’t persuasion._

Dark red dews at Lance’s nose, gathering heavily until it trickles over his lip. He turns to Haxus. Keith knows what he’s going to do before the words even build in Lance’s throat. He’s felt it—the fear of letting something dangerous continue living.

That’s a line he doesn’t want Lance to cross.

“Don’t,” rasps Keith.

No words leave Lance’s mouth, but Braids and Suits are already looking towards Haxus.

“You’re not a demon.”

Red at Lance’s teeth, bared in cold rage.

“Lance—please.”

The clatter of something more falling from the ceiling. The ominous crunch of supports crumbling. Lance’s gaze falling on Keith reaching for him, slumping against the skid.

Lance’s fury seems to drain out of him, but his voice is no less overwhelming when he says, “ _Sleep.”_

The demons collapse to the dusty floor. Keith feels as though he may cry. Lance stumbles to him, ruined leg dragging. He drops beside Keith heavily. When he threads his fingers with Keith’s, his hands are shaking. A chunk of the ceiling drops and flattens a skid across from them. Bits of packaging shower over their heads. Another crate bursts elsewhere. Keith holds Lance’s hand tight until he can’t feel the trembling anymore.

“I’m sorry,” says Lance hoarsely.

“No,” sighs Keith, “you’re okay.”

A metal beam groans above them. Something snaps, collapses, and they’re showered with more dust. Keith allows himself to rest against Lance. His eyelids bob heavily, his head a mess. There’s a pressure in his ears. He doesn’t know whether he’s succumbing to his injuries or Lance’s influence; he doesn’t think he cares.

All Keith wonders about are the brightly burning galaxies erupting over them as the building finally collapses.

 

* * *

 

Keith wakes in stages: first is the music, faint like it’s coming from another room in his apartment; next is the sensation of something tugging against the back of his hand; third is the light flickering over his eyelids. It’s only when he opens them that he realizes it’s the setting sun streaming through leaves.

Keith pushes himself up, feeling three times his weight and shaky. His movement disturbs someone between him and the window, and Keith turns his head properly to see Lance stirring. He’s dressed in a hospital gown, with one leg in a cast from the knee down and propped up on Keith’s bed. The plaster has been heavily decorated—Keith recognizes Hunk’s slanted handwriting and Pidge’s messy scrawl. Keith is already grinning when Lance opens his eyes.

“Getting comfortable, are we?” Keith jokes when Lance realizes why he woke up.

In an instant, Lance is beaming and throwing himself forward—or at least he tries. It takes some navigating to get his cast on the floor, in which time Keith is ready with open arms. He smells strongly of new things, but there’s a hint of spearmint and coffee that makes Keith only hold him tighter. He buries his face into the crook of Lance’s neck.

“How do you feel?” mumbles Keith into his shoulder.

“Great.” Lance’s voice vibrates through his chest to Keith’s. “Except not actually. Total shit, really, but alive shit, so there’s that.”

“There’s that,” huffs Keith. He leans back, pulling Lance half onto the bed. He figures out what Keith wants rather slowly, and navigating the tubes and wires isn’t easy, but eventually they get there, lying shoulder to ankle on the narrow bed with their hands intertwined.

“How do _you_ feel?” asks Lance.

Keith takes a moment to think about it. “Alive.”

“So like shit.”

“Yeah. Total.”

They share a laugh that twinges something in Keith’s head, but he doesn’t care. No amount of pain is going to stop him from laughing now. They made it. Somehow.

“What happened?” asks Keith when their mirth tapers off into smiles and thumbs brushing over knuckles.

Lance’s eyes go wide. “You’re _not_ going to believe this. The entire roof was coming down on us, right? I thought for sure we were going to die, but there was this like, _whooshing_ sound and a pop—y’know, like when your ears pop?”

“Mm.”

“And then the air went all—I don’t know. It looked like those videos of neurons, and what do they call those things—electrical impulses? I think?”

“Like galaxies,” says Keith.

“Oh—wait, _yeah_ , totally! So everything that touched it just kind of vanished and this gorgeous woman walked out. Of the air. The galaxy-neuron-air, I mean.”

“Not a demon?” Keith tries to imagine it.

“No! But get this—she’s your _doctor_.”

Keith meets Lance’s expectant stare with an incredulous one of his own. “ _What?”_

“Yeah! Look, I even got an autograph!” Lance lifts his leg and points at his cast where there’s a hastily looped _Allura_.

“You’re fucking with me,” Keith says.

“Wild, right?” Lance sighs contentedly as he sets his leg back down. “I figure you should probably hear all this shit from me before… well, y’know. It gets overwhelming. You’ve been out for two days.”

Keith squeezed his eyes shut, but there’s a movie reel running behind his eyelids and the echo of explosions in his ears. “Tell me everything.”

“You should probably take it slow—”

“Lance, please.” He sighs. “Just—everything.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then, “Like ripping off a bandaid?”

“Please.”

“Alright.” Lance shifts against him, the volume of his voice dropping slightly. “Allura saved us, you got that. I woke up yesterday, just as Shay was getting out of surgery. She’s fine, besides, y’know, being shot.”

Keith almost expects himself to turn into liquid out of sheer relief.

“There were two arrests.” Lance pauses. “I don’t know how he got away but, the pointy one? Giving orders? Gone.”

“Gone,” echoes Keith.

“Yeah,” says Lance quietly. “Nobody’s told me otherwise.”

“So the police came by?”

“Oh. Uh. No.”

Keith turns his head to frown at Lance, who swallows visibly.

“So, like, here’s the thing,” says Lance, his gaze flicking to the drawn curtains around one side of the bed. His voice drops even lower. “Apparently Matt, Pidge’s brother, has been in here for a little while now.”

Keith nods, uncertain whether he’s supposed to act shocked by this.

“So he and Allura have apparently buddied up and they’ve been...digging. Before you start hounding me,” he adds quickly, “Pidge is the one that told me this so really, hound _her_. The point is, Allura and Matt think there’s some sort of shady shit going on.”

“What, like police corruption?”

“Yeah, or something. So Matt was doing some investigating, and he thinks—or they think—that as soon as Allura got us out of there, Sendak sent in his plants to fetch the one guy. Left the other two.”

A chill sweeps through Keith, icing his very bones. If Sendak has plants in the police force, who’s to say they’re not in the hospital as well? He can do whatever he wants, when he wants to. He’s toying with them.

It feels like frost is crawling up Keith’s throat. His skin feels clammy, and his breath is coming faster, and he’s about to do something stupid like panic when the curtain is suddenly being ripped aside.

The first thing Keith sees is Pidge’s beaming smile before she’s throwing herself at him.

“You asshole,” she says into his shoulder. “You fucking _dick_.”

The frost disintegrates from surprise. Keith’s never heard anything so heartwarming in his life. “Sorry,” he says, awkwardly looping the arm she’s got trapped between them to pat her back.

Pidge jolts away with a deep scowl. “Never again, you hear me? You don’t get to do that again! This is your free card, and you’ve used it up. I swear, if you so much as—”

“Understood,” says Keith, quickly disrupting her momentum. “Never again. Got it.”

She narrows her eyes. “Good.”

Not that he’s going to actually keep that promise. Especially if there’s a chance that—Oh. Keith feels the cold prickles of dread gathering in his gut again. His jaw aches and he realizes he’s clenched it.

“Shay’s went to get coffee with Hunk,” says Pidge, sprawling out and elbowing Lance’s feet away. Her eyes search Keith’s expression for a moment, confirming he’s aware their friend is alive, before continuing, “It was actually raw as hell. She performed first aid _on herself_. She was like, ‘I’m about to go into shock’ and told us what to do to keep her focused. While there was blood gushing out of her chest.”

A brush of hair alerts Keith to Lance as he tucks his head on his shoulder. “Hunk is highkey swooning.”

“I would be too,” says Keith as he allows himself, hesitantly, to sink back into the shallow sensation of safety surrounded by his friends. There’s still discomfort there, the telltale traces of anxiety that he doubts will ever go away, but knowing his friends aren’t dead is a good start. “Um, is Allura—the doctor, I mean. Is she around?”

“Oh yeah, she’s around.” Pidge sits up again to pin Keith under her stare. “You’re not the only one who keeps in contact with her.”

That sounds incredibly ominous. Keith chooses not to comment. He doesn’t have to, when the door swings open and the woman herself is entering. Her hair is in wisps about her head, freeing itself from her bun—just as usual. Keith doesn’t see the face of a powerful misfit, he just sees a doctor.

Until their eyes meet and she smiles. Maybe he does.

“Glad to see you up,” she says.

“Um,” begins Keith coherently. “I heard. About you, uh, saving us.” He pauses. “Thank you.”

Allura cocks her head. “Next time,” she says with a small smile, “I’ll be quicker.”

“There won’t _be_ a next time,” chirps Pidge before Keith can even begin trying to give voice to just how incredibly grateful he feels. “We’re going to stow you away. All of us, actually. Everyone, we’re going into hiding.”

“Hiding?” asks Keith

Allura’s eyebrows are pulled together with resignation. “Unfortunately, this city is as close to overrun as one can get with demons. I can’t say I trust...the usual methods of witness protection. Not in a city this corrupt.”

Keith’s mouth goes dry. “Do you think they could be in the hospital, too?”

“I can’t say I’m certain about anything,” says Allura, “which is why I’m having you moved as soon as you’re able. Until then, I’ll be keeping watch.” Pidge clears her throat, prompting Allura to add, “And so will Pidge and Matt, well-versed as they are in illegal activities.”

“ _Secret_ activities,” corrects Pidge.

Keith is silent as they talk, barely absorbing the information offered to him. He never did accomplish what he set out to do. In the end, he’d only made it worse. It’s enough to make him want to cry. With a shuddering inhale, he says, “He’s still out there.”

Pidge and Allura pause; Lance stiffens, then slumps closer with a sigh.

“He’ll probably come after you again,” Lance says.

“That’s—”

“But it’s different now. You have us. We’re _on your side._ You’re not alone.”

Keith opens his mouth to protest, then realizes there’s nothing to be said. There’s Allura, eyes on Keith, clipboard in hand, always reaching out to help even when he didn’t ask for it—their saviour. On the end of the bed, Pidge has her legs folded up, chin on her knees. There’s no doubt from the sly curve of her smile that she’s excited for this. _Prepared_ , just like Matt who has already begun while Keith lay injured from his vengeful stupidity.

“You’re right,” he says finally. “With us together, they won’t stand a chance.”

The door swings open. “I hope that _us_ includes—well, us,” says Hunk as he enters with coffees in hand. Shay steps up from behind him. She looks a worn out, but her eyes are bright and her smile even moreso when it lands on Keith.

“Glad to see you are awake,” she says, moving forward to hand a coffee to Allura and Pidge as Hunk passes one off to Lance.

“Glad to see you alive,” says Keith, pausing before adding, “I’m sorry.”

Shay shakes her head. “There is so much happening in this city that I doubt any one person can be to blame for everything. We are alive. I would much rather celebrate that.”

Keith nods slowly, though he still feels ashamed for putting her life at risk so thoughtlessly.

“I don’t want to put anyone else in danger,” he starts.

“Too bad,” interrupts Hunk. “We’re not letting some psychopaths run free in our city, threatening our friends. It’s my choice to do what I can to keep you all safe.” He nearly crumples his coffee cup in his fist, wincing when a splash of hot liquid hits his hand. “A-anyway, they’d be idiots to try and off you when you’re surrounded by people.”

Shay lists her head to one side. “The one with the red eye shot me in the middle of a festival.”

Hunk blinks. “Okay. Well.” Then he frowns. “We won’t be caught off-guard. Again.”

“Matt and I have that covered,” says Pidge, taking much too big a gulp of her scalding drink. “We’ve got eyes. Allura’s got brains. We’re thinking of asking Coran for help. He’s got...contacts.”

“What sort of contacts?” asks Hunk cautiously.

Pidge shrugs. “The man’s lived.”

“It won’t be a simple matter,” says Allura, “but it’s possible to take you all off the map for a period of time. They’ll be focused on following you, rather than distant family, which will give us enough time to formulate a plan.”

“Because he won’t stop until he gets what he wants,” mutters Keith.

He sees Lance turn towards him in his periphery, but nobody else seems to hear. They’re already talking strategy—who to call, where to go, places to keep an eye on. It’s clear they’ve been mulling this over for some time. Maybe that’s why Allura gave Keith her number in the first place, because she knew he would need it, and that she could help.

If only he’d called sooner.

There’s a nudge against his arm. Keith gives a start as he comes back to the present. They’re all still talking, Pidge with her empty coffee cup dangling from one hand, Hunk and Shay sitting close together on one bed, Allura using the clipboard in her hand to gesticulate.

And then there’s Lance, looking straight at Keith with a concerned frown.

“You’re overwhelmed,” murmurs Lance.

With a quick shake of his head, Keith says, “No, not...not really. I’m just...thinking.”

“Do you…” Lance looks around at their friends, deep in discussion, “...want to go for a walk? Visit your brother, maybe?”

Keith’s breath hitches, just barely, and he nods.

It doesn’t take much effort for them to leave. Lance speaks as if he’d been waiting for that moment, easily brushing off their friends with excuses of exercise and fresh air. Maybe they too were waiting for it.

Regardless, Keith is grateful when Allura finishes checking him over and unhooking him from his machinery, and he and Lance are out in the nearly empty hallway, just the two of them. Lance takes Keith’s hand with his own not currently occupied by a crutch. The muted rubbery sound of the crutch hitting the floor every other step is somehow calming, blending in with the other sounds of the hospital.

They take the elevator up a floor, pass a family of three holding steaming cups of tea and a nurse in scrubs patterned with polka dots. Keith doesn’t check the room numbers. Instead, his gaze is fixed on the gleaming floor.

It’s a lot quieter here. If Keith strains, he can hear a dozen heart monitors beeping out of sync with each other. He wonders, briefly, how many are there because of demons. He wonders how many he could have prevented.

“You’re not still blaming yourself, are you?”

Keith can’t even be bothered to deny it. It’s become such a deeply ingrained habit. Lance sighs.

“This didn’t start with you. It’s been happening for ages. You and I—we’re just collateral damage.” He stops and turns to face Keith, expression stern. “Everyone is invested in this. If we have a chance to stop this from happening, then we need to take it. Honestly, I’m terrified, but I know I have a power that can _help_.”

Lance looks aside for a moment, jaw working. When he speaks next, his voice is strong and clear and determined, his gaze locked with Keith’s.

“I’m going to save people. I’m going to stop anyone else getting threatened and hurt, like you. Like Matt. Like Shiro.”

It’s as if someone has Keith’s heart in their grip, but instead of squeezing the life out of him, they’re forcing it back in. The determination to fight back, and prevent future tragedies. Lance is strong, Keith thinks, but he himself isn’t such a pushover either.

It’s what Shiro, standing tall amidst a crumbling building, would have done.

“You’re pretty amazing, you know that?” says Keith.

Lance makes a curious sound in his throat that causes Keith to grin.

“You’re amazing,” he repeats. “I don’t want to think about where I would be if you hadn’t turned up in my life, and I don’t care. You’re right. I want to save people too, but this time I’m going to do it right.” His smile widens. “With help.”

Lance stares at him. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then, “Are you trying to seduce me?”

“ _What?”_ splutters Keith.

“I’m serious,” says Lance, looking incredulous yet still squeezing their fingers together. “I’m swooning. How do you do that?”

“I’m just saying what’s on my mind, I’m not _seducing_ —”

“Ah, yes,” says Lance sagely, “you’re just a natural. Everything you say, just consider me wooed.”

“Oh my God,” huffs Keith, tugging Lance towards him so he can hide his face in his shoulder. “If you swoon at everything I say, then I’m embarrassed at everything _you_ say.”

“Hm, that’s fair.”

Keith lifts his head and turns away. With a tug of his hand, Lance follows as he continues their walk down the hall.

It’s been awhile since he last felt something like hope. He’s been stubbornly alone for so long that the knowledge he’s got people waiting to catch him when he falls is incredible. In fact, Keith can’t remember the last time he could wholeheartedly rely on another person beyond his brother. As soon as Keith thinks it, they’re standing outside Shiro’s door. He can’t make out anything inside besides the sunlight coming in through the window.

“Lance,” starts Keith slowly. “I know this is a long shot, and I don’t know the limits to your power but...what if…”

“I persuade Shiro to wake up?”

He gives a start and looks at Lance. “Yeah. Is it possible…?”

“I already tried,” Lance says awkwardly, casting his gaze aside. “It didn’t work.”

“Oh.”

A beat of silence. Then two. Keith doesn’t know if he’s physically capable of opening the door.

“But there’s something else I want to try.”

Keith tears his gaze away to look at Lance. “What you did, back there?”

“Yeah, it’s just...it’s not persuasion anymore is it? It’s a demand.”

“An order,” agrees Keith. _And it’s terrifying_ , he doesn’t say.

Lance looks nervous. “Before, I would just talk, and things would happen. People would react. It was their own ideas, right? I was just convincing them. I never...tried to force it before. Not like that. If it’s alright with you, I want to try.”

“Are you...up for it?” asks Keith, recalling the blood that dribbled thickly from Lance’s nose. That couldn’t be a good thing.

Lance grins. “My throat feels like shit, and I’ve got a migraine coming on strong, but your brother’s been sleeping long enough, don’t you think?”

Keith swallows once, twice, to stifle his nerves. The door opens easily at his touch; the room is exactly how he remembers from the last time he visited. Keith’s attention flicks over the drawn curtains around the bed on the other side, but there’s only the sound of another person’s steadily beeping machines. He exhales, allows his gaze to fall back on Shiro. Something glitters, and Keith blinks at the pink pinwheel sitting in a cup beside Shiro’s bed. A smile tugs at Keith’s lips.

“Nice decor,” he says.

Lance rubs the back of his neck. “Sorry. I kind’ve snuck in with Pidge.”

“It’s fine. I wish I hadn’t dropped mine.”

Keith walks up to the bed first, feeling rather than seeing Lance hesitate before joining him. Shiro looks as gaunt as ever, but there’s something different. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Keith no longer has a shroud of false responsibility over his head, or perhaps it’s because Lance is with him now, his fingers brushing over Keith’s palm. Where before his brother looked like he was dying, now Keith sees a weak man hanging on to life, waiting for the right moment.

 _If there’s ever a moment_ , Keith thinks, _it’s now_.

It’s with a body full of nervous energy that he steps back to allow Lance to take his place. Casting one last glance at Keith, Lance closes his eyes and inhales deep.

When he opens them again, Keith already feels the change.

“Shiro,” says Lance, his voice thick and rich as honey—a stranger’s voice, laced with power.

Keith’s heart begins to race, as if it can outrun the molten gold timbre of words not meant for him. _Not mine_ , Keith thinks, but his body shivers as if it wants him to obey anyway.

“ _Wake up.”_

Keith doesn’t breathe until he watches the shutter of his brother’s eyelids opening.

 

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO PUMPED TO HAVE THIS DONE Y'ALL HAVE NO IDEA. I ended up so frustrated with this thing that I sort of gave up where I should have hunkered down and rewritten and replotted, but instead here you have it. I've learned a lot about myself and my writing during this, let me tell you, and I've been using this newfound knowledge to improve myself as I go forward. 
> 
> Thanks for sticking through it with me, famjam!! I appreciate you all lots and lots <3


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